Sweet Bess - Paperback

Bess Antwine made one mistake at sixteen: she fell in love. Twenty years later, she's a widow with five children, no money, and a choice to make. Stay in the Arkansas sharecropping community that's slowly killed her spirit, or return to the Louisiana family she abandoned-bringing her dead husband's body with her.

Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and spanning from World War II to the Civil Rights era, Sweet Bess is an intimate portrait of a woman caught between two worlds, two men, and two versions of herself. It's about the resilience required to survive poverty, the courage needed to accept help, and the complicated truth that sometimes strength looks like surrender.