Hamilton Stone Editions announces the publication of Inheritance, a novel of American race history: of relationships between people of different and mixed race heritages, relationships of love and friendship and profound loyalty, and relationships of deep ignorance, violence and terrible hatred. In her latest novel, Jane Lazarre moves from the present time, back to the early 20th century, and then back to the period of Slavery, shortly before the Civil War. The white characters are all connected through a black family, whose four generations move through the novel. It is a story of our shared inheritance, a history we forget or deny at our peril; it is a story of what it means, in this nation’s history and present, to be “mixed” racially, the history of that identity, and how it is connected to the meaning and history of whiteness.
Inheritance is an American story, and as its intertwined tales are revealed, we are gripped by relationships as they form and reform over the years and within a day; and we are gripped by the voice of the narrator, Samantha Reed, a young woman of mixed heritage who is reading, writing, learning the history, as we the readers do ourselves.