SAPPHIRE'S GRAVE - RANDOM HOUSE/BROADWAY BOOKS TO RELEASE TRADE PAPERBACK

A poignant and engrossing multi-generational saga reminiscent of the recent bestseller, Cane River, SAPPHIRE’S GRAVE, by Hilda Gurley-Highgate, marks the arrival of a major talent poised to take the literary world by storm. Broadway Books will release the trade paperback December 23, 2003.

(PRWEB) December 12, 2003

A poignant and engrossing multi-generational saga reminiscent of the recent bestseller, Cane River, SAPPHIRE’S GRAVE (Doubleday; Publication: January 2003) by Hilda Gurley-Highgate marks the arrival of a major talent poised to take the literary world by storm. The trade paperback will be available this month.

The novel, an epic work of historical fiction, spans over 200 years to trace the lives of women who battled unspeakable injustices to create a legacy of hope and achievement. Opening in 1764 in Sierra Leone, a woman of staunch pride and unbreakable will is captured and taken to the “New World” on a slave ship. Once on American soil she gives birth to a daughter who shares not only her mother’s strength, but also her “black-blue-black” complexion.

The child is called Sapphire and grows up and gives birth to several daughters of her own, but she eventually is faced with tragedy that kills her physically, but creates “the beginning of a legend.” That legend is Sapphire’s defiant and prevailing spirit — a spirit that is traced through the lives of her descendants and sustains the women through poverty, oppression, abuse, humiliation, and scandal. Gurley-Highgate writes with lyricism and sensitivity, offering vivid, descriptive passages attesting to Sapphire’s legacy of strength that lives on in the women who follow her, “each carrying something of her mother, her grandmother, her aunts; each passing on to her own daughters blessing and cursing, the consequences of her own choosing.”

Passionately written in luminous prose, SAPPHIRE’S GRAVE not only illuminates the meaning of roots and links between women and their female ancestors, it evokes the deeper story of several generations of black women in America since slavery — and their search for dignity and respect. Bringing to life a slice of American history at once devastating and uplifting, Hilda Gurley-Highgate offers a deeply moving and universal tale that is sure to resonate with readers of every race or gender.

“A lyric paean to black women throughout the centuries.”

–– Kirkus Reviews

“Hilda Gurley-Highgate’s writing is vivid and powerful as she details the spiritual and emotional consciousness of these women individually as well as collectively through their link to their African foremother. In doing so, Gurley-Highgate also evokes the larger story of black women in America since slavery and their search for dignity and identity.”

–– Booklist

“Well-crafted and deeply emotional, Sapphire’s Grave is by turns a heart-rending and uplifting trek through women’s history. Gurley-Highgate writes with a crisp, unsentimental style and captures regional cadences as succinctly as the poetry of the inner self. Attention, Oprah: time to reopen that book club.”

–– The Baltimore Sun

“By turns brutal and uplifting … Gurley-Highgate … provides a powerful statement about the toll of slavery on those who experienced it and those who came after.”

–– The Bergen Record

About the Author:

HILDA GURLEY-HIGHGATE is an environmental attorney with the Wayne County Corporation Counsel’s Office in Detroit, Michigan. She writes and performs poetry at local Detroit-area venues. This is her first novel.

SAPPHIRE’S GRAVE

By Hilda Gurley-Highgate

ISBN: 0-385-50323-7 / US $24.95

Publication: January 2003

Published by Doubleday

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