Black Heel Strings

“The author’s gifts recall Toni Morrison. Sentence after sentence reads like poetry. The earth and sea come alive through her words, as though the author’s language gave birth to the natural world itself. Simply stunning.” —Anuradha Bhagwati, author of Unbecoming: A Memoir of Disobedience.

“A breathtaking memoir in the spirit of Jesmyn Ward. Growing up in the shadows of Jim Crow that persisted longer on the Eastern Shore than in other places, Caudell shares her childhood journey on landscapes rife with prejudice, disappointment and, yet, still full of hope. She embraces and nurtures the ghosts of her ancestors through the deep love and joy of her grandmother, who protected her with precious knowledge, ancient customs, and powerful memories. A treasure and an absolute must read!” —Kate Clifford Larson, NYT Bestselling author of Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer.

“Caudell’s eloquent memoir of place, of time, speaks poetry to us of the personal experiences of life that touch us all, ancestors and descendants. At the same time, this timelessness is embedded in American histories of race, mixture, segregation, and integration, the seen and unseen. Timely. Family. Timeless.” —Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol

Robin Michel Caudell is an award-winning journalist and videographer, and a staff writer at the Press Republican. Her poetry has been anthologized in national and international publications. A native of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Caudell is a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park and Goddard College. She is an alumna of Cave Canem, Gotham Writers Workshop, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She served in the US Air Force and was a John L. Levitow Honor Graduate.