Good Dirt
by Charmaine Wilkerson · 2025
Buy on AmazonWhen ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get. So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there.…
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"Explored ancestral trauma linked to a valuable historical pottery jar."
Anne's Best Books of 2024 · modernmrsdarcy.com
"Ebby Freeman’s idyllic childhood turned upside down the day she saw her big brother Baz shot and killed during a home invasion. Her peace shattered alongside the stoneware jar that broke the day Baz died, a jar that generations of her family had passed along starting in slavery to eventual prosperity. As she grows into adulthood, Ebby reckons with the lingering effects of prejudice and secrets in her broken engagement to a white man. This novel is a timely reminder that values, strength and connection sustain us more deeply than falsely taken power or the worship of status or things."
NPR Books We Love — 2025 · apps.npr.org