Shelly: The First Twenty Years of a Young Girl's Life

by Dorothy Maria Wingo

In SHELLY, her first novel, Dorothy Maria Wingo paints an insightful picture of the first twenty years of a young black woman's life. In a small Michigan village, Shelly Wright learns to treasure her African heritage and the strengths and security of the extended family. She witnesses the hate and prejudice of the Ku Klux Klan and investigates the horrors of the slave trade and the difficult lives of America's slaves. Her search for ancestral roots takes her from the white Victorian houses of the Michigan peninsula to the skyscrapers of New York City and then to the mud brick huts of a Senegalese village.

249 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2004