Live Digital Event Via Zoom | April 27, 2025 | 2:00 p.m. EST/1:00 p.m. CST
This month’s presenter Leslye Penelope is a mighty special presenter – she is Bethel Dukes granddaughter! She is a Howard graduate – okay course – HU – you know! And her genre is fantasy and historical fiction. Her most recent book Daughter of the Merciful Deep explores the life of Jane Edwards. According to Penelope’s website: “Our home began, as all things do, with a wish.”
Jane Edwards hasn’t spoken since she was eleven years old, when armed riders expelled her family from their hometown along with every other Black resident. Now, twelve years later, she’s found a haven in the all-Black town of Awenasa. But the construction of a dam promises to wash her home under the waters of the new lake.
Jane will do anything to save the community that sheltered her. So, when a man with uncanny abilities arrives in town asking strange questions, she wonders if he might be the key. But as the stranger hints at gods and ancestral magic, Jane is captivated by a bigger mystery. She knows this man. Only the last time she saw him, he was dead. His body laid to rest in a rushing river.
Who is the stranger and what is he really doing in Awenasa? To find those answers, Jane will journey into a sunken world, a land of capricious gods and unsung myths, of salvation and dreams made real. But the flood waters are rising. To gain the miracle she desires, Jane will have to find her voice again and finally face the trauma of the past.
Visit her website to learn more about this accomplished, award-winning author here