Fresh Water road by Denise Nicholas

the debut novel by Denise Nicholas. Ms. Nicholas is probably best known to you as the pioneering actress who starred in the TV series Room 222 and In the Heat of the Night (for which she also wrote several episodes), as well as a great many other TV shows and films. But with Freshwater Road, she embarks on a stunning second act as a brilliant writer of fiction. the book has already been highly praised by pre-pub media such as PW (which gave it a coveted "starred" review) and Booklist, and is sure to garner even more such accolades.

Freshwater Road appeared at an important time: the conviction in Mississippi of reputed ex-Klansman Edgar Ray Killen for the 1964 abduction and murder of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner, which The New York Times called "the most infamous unresolved case from America's civil rights struggles."

Freshwater Road tells the story of 19-year-old Celeste Tyree, who in the summer of 1964 journeys to the small town of Pineyville, Mississippi, to help the organization One Man, one Vote register local "Negroes" to vote. Like Celeste, Ms. Nicholas also grew up in Detroit and attended the University of Michigan, and like Celeste she took part in the movement; as a young member of the Free Southern Theater, she performed throughout the South, often in small churches, from 1964 to 1966. Drawing on this intensely personal foundation, as well as razor-sharp skills for inhabiting characters and a gift for expressive prose, Ms. Nicholas's new book is certain to be recognized as one of the first novels of the year, and ultimately as one of the most important novels ever written about the civil rights movement.

Freshwater Road is the story of one young woman's journey into adulthood via the political and social upheavals of the civil rights movement. A young black collegian, Celeste Tyree, leaves Ann Arbor to go to Poplarville, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964 to help found a Freedom School and a voter registration project as part of Freedom Summer. As the summer unfolds, she confronts not only the political -realities of race and poverty in this tiny town, but also truths about herself and her own family.

As Celeste gets to know her fellow activists and the people of Poplarville, she grapples with her father's disapproval of her decision to go to Mississippi. A numbers-playing bar owner in Detroit, Shuck is proud of his daughter and proud of the opportunities he's provided for her; Celeste's risking what he's provided by going to the violent South is not what he had planned for her. Long estranged from her mother, Celeste is rocked by revelations of wrenching details of her past, while at the same time, she develops a deep relationship with the woman hosting her in Mississippi, Odessa Robbins, who helps Celeste learn more about what it means to be an adult woman and a "person of substance" in the world.

Before her career as a TV star, Denise Nicholas herself was a Freedom Rider in 1964, and in Freshwater Road, she reaches back to bring that summer alive in this unforgettable first novel.