The American Daughters

＂An enthralling tale of a secret resistance movement run by Black women in pre-Civil War New Orleans.＂--Time

＂Stirring . . . In telling this important, neglected history with imagination-fueled research, The American Daughters offers an inspiring story of people who show a way forward with their perseverance, bravery and love.＂--The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl, and her fierce mother, Sanite, are inseparable. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pair spend their days dreaming of a loving future and reminiscing about their family’s rebellious and storied history. When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and directionless until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called the Daughters. With the courage instilled in her by Sanite--and with help from these strong women--Ady learns how to put herself first. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.

The American Daughters is a novel of hope and triumph that reminds us what is possible when a community bands together to fight for their freedom.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of We Cast a Shadow, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Open Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and International Dublin Literary Award. A recipient of an Iowa Review Award in fiction, he has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, the Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. A native of New Orleans, he is a graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop and a member of the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance.