A new novel by Audrey Taylor Gonzalez
Published by Stube Books May 2022
A follow-up to South of Everything that also serves as a standalone novel, Bones traces the story of Missy, a young woman from a plantation-owning family in the Deep South. When Missy is violently attacked as a teenager, she is sent to a boarding school and her beloved Mr. Washington is wrongfully imprisoned. Baffled by the pervasive racism of her environment, Missy allows her fierce love for Mr. Washington to be her guiding light on her mission to be reunited with him.
When Missy meets Chief Bakari, a Mbulu tribal chief, she is tasked with returning Old Thomas’s bones to the mystical lolololo tree. Missy readily accepts, as Old Thomas was Missy’s protector, and he had introduced her to the magical, healing tree.
Missy’s quest brings her to Tanganyika, where she feels an immediate kinship with the people of Africa. But tensions are mounting, and Missy’s journey will reach a fever pitch when a brutal act threatens her existence.
A work of magical realism and folklore, Bones is an immersive, at times macabre love story that spans continents gripped by racism and upheaval.
PRAISE for South of Everything
ForeWord Reviews’ IndieFab Book of the Year “Editor’s Choice Award”
Winner of International Book Award in “Religious Fiction”
Independent Publisher Awards Bronze in “Best Regional Fiction South”
“South of Everything is a triumph, an essential but oft unheard American story…one you won’t want to put down.” – Amy Friedman, author of Desperado’s Wife: A Memoir
“Audrey Gonzalez has written vividly about a place near my town Memphis, Tennessee – and my time also — before the Civil Rights Movement both of which were fueled by a slow, painful spiritual awakening and the breached birth of The Blues.” – Deanie Parker, African American singer/songwriter and former president/CEO of the Soulsville Foundation
“Audrey Taylor Gonzalez captures the concrete realities in a family’s everyday life, and connects those details to the cultural evolution taking place at that time.” – Becca Stevens, author, Episcopal priest, named by the White House as one of 15 Champions of Change for violence against women in 2011; founder of Thistle Farms-Magdalene
“This is a sacred story about love’s power to claim and redeem those who are willing to ask questions, look more deeply into the natural world and challenge the status quo.” – Elaine Blanchard, author, actor, human rights advocate and recipient of The 2011 Jefferson Award for Public Service
“In the hands of an adroit storyteller, magical realism has always been one of the most truthful and compelling forms of fiction. Here, Gonzales proves herself to be master of both the form and her material. A beautiful book.” – Phyllis Tickle, American author and lecturer, founding editor of the Religion Department of PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Audrey Taylor Gonzalez has written a magical tale about the realities of religious and racial prejudice, transformed by the author’s compassion and depth of understanding of the flawed nature of humanity.” – Jimmy Santiago Baca, American Book Award and Pushcart Prize winning poet and novelist
“The writing is so realistic one can taste the barbeque.” – Marygay Shipley, bookseller and former owner of That Bookstore in Blytheville, AR.
