The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin

True stories happen, and then you tell them. But what you tell depends on what you see. And what you see depends on what you know. – Florence Forrest

Recently, I was asked by TLC Book Tours to read “The Queen of Palmyra” by Minrose Gwin and write a review of the novel on my blog during the author’s book tour this month. I happily agreed – a quick Google search will show “The Queen of Palmyra” has received incredible praise since it was released on April 27, and it has been compared to another literary classic that just happens to be one of my favorite books: To Kill a Mockingbird.

I read the book cover to cover in less than a few days; I was completely mesmerized by Minrose Gwin’s beautiful, descriptive style of writing. The small heroine in Gwin’s novel, Florence Forrest, is coming of age in race-divided Millwood, Mississippi in the early 1960s, and through several painful experiences, she realizes what it really means to be “white” versus “black.” Her mother, distant and often absent in her life, leaves Florence to latch onto her grandparents’ black maid, Zenie. Florence admires Zenie, and even though the woman treats her as if she is a burden, she comes to think of Zenie as a second mother. Florence also adores Zenie’s niece, Eva, a college educated, strong willed young girl with ties to the NAACP.

Although Florence loves Zenie and Eva as if they were her own family, she catches herself treating them poorly on occasion. Her recognition of her actions is poignant; she identifies her racist remarks as actions that were planted deep inside her, taught through example by other white people in her life. She thinks to herself, “Twice now I had been ugly to Zenie in that I’m-white-and-you’re-not sort of way. I was mortally ashamed of it and of the evilness in my heart it must have come from. Where did that foulness come from anyway? …Now that I could see the evil thing lurking in my own nature, I was going to watch my mouth better. The way I saw it then, it didn’t matter about the ugliness in your heart if you just kept it out of your mouth. I thought maybe if you kept it locked inside you, unheard by anyone, it dried up after a while like a piece of rotten fruit, given that it’s not how you really meant yourself to be. Not your true-hearted self but a web of something else all around you that crawls up into your insides and tries to make a nasty little nest there out of poison and ugliness.” I love this passage; isn't it so true that racism is taught? I think that every generation since the 1960s has become a little better at suppressing racist thoughts...and hopefully, as we go on, it will eventually be nonexistent.

Perhaps most painful and difficult for Florence is her eventual realization that she must come to grips with her father’s deep-rooted, evil secret that is central to her town’s race divide and the upheaval in her family life. The author keeps the reader guessing throughout the book, and even I couldn’t imagine the horrors that Florence is finally faced with at the end of the novel.

I have to admit that this book touched something deep inside me. I hope you will read it too, and feel the rush of emotions and feelings that come with experiencing Florence Forrest’s story. Even though she is a fictional character, we can all learn from her and the happenings in this book, as many of them were pulled from real life and our country’s recent history. While we have come a long way as a nation since the ‘60s concerning race relations – most recently with the election of our first black president - we still have a long way to go.

To learn more about the Queen of Palmyra book tour, click here! To purchase the novel in paperback or for your Amazon Kindle, visit Amazon.com. Finally, Minrose Gwin, the author, will be on Blog Talk Radio with Book Club Girl on Monday, May 17th at 4pm EST. To learn more, visit Blog Talk Radio.