The Personal History of Rachel Dupree

Praised by Alice Walker and many other bestselling writers, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is an award-winning debut novel with incredible heart about life on the prairie as it's rarely been seen. Reminiscent of The Color Purple, as well as the frontier novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather, it opens a window on the little-known history of African American homesteaders and gives voice to an extraordinary heroine who embodies the spirit that built America. When Rachel, hired help in a Chicago boardinghouse falls in love with Isaac, the boardinghouse owner's son, Isaac agrees to marry hr, but only if she gives up her 160 acres from the Homestead Act so he can double his share. Fourteen years later, in the South Dakota Badlands during the brutal summer of 1917, Rachel is pregnant and struggling to feed her family, bu she knows Isaac will never leave the ranch. Somehow she must find the strength to do what is right - for herself, and for her children.