"Finding Daisy: from the Deep South to the Promised Land"

I am so pleased to reveal that my third book, Finding Daisy: From the Deep South to the Promised Land is being reviewed by the editor. Many thanks go to the beta readers who commented on my manuscript chapters over the past half a year. 

Truly, my interest in family history started with my indomitable grandmother, Daisy Rae Dooley Marshall Schumake, in 1976. An elder, African American co-worker asked who the white people were in my family on my third day at work. I never claimed anything other than African beginnings, but I really didn't know about our lineage. I wrote letters to both grandmothers asking why we look the way  we look. Grandma Daisy said we had European, African, and Blackfoot Indian blood. That set me off on a forty year + adventure to find out who those people were. Also interesting was the tale she told about her birthplace. I looked for records of her life in St. Louis, Missouri, for decades, until a Dooley cousin told me in 2006 that my grandmother was actually born in the Deep South. Why did she lie? Finding the truth about Daisy became the impetus for writing this book.

Genealogy journeys to Cleveland, Ohio, and the four states that make up the deepest of the Deep South introduced me to my people and places I never dreamed I would learn about: plantations, property, deeds, complicated family ties, bondage, trains, damaged body parts, fame, migrations, funerals, hospitals, cattle, cotton.

I chose to take all ohose divergent topics and craft them into a four-part, literary nonfiction book. Three parts are generally told from the point of view of Grandma Daisy herself. The fourth portion utilizes Daisy’s grandmother, GramFannie, as "The Storyteller", who imparts stories about our enslaved ancestors from the Deep South. She serves as a griot. Those Kunta Kinte moments of heritage ideally would have been passed down from generation to generation in my family, but that did not happen. Through this book, the history of our ancestors will be told and remembered for future generations to come.