Happy Land - 3 stars > Likes and Comments

As I was reading this, I vacillated, thinking I’d rate it 3, 4 or 5 stars. I enjoyed the beginning, felt bogged down and a bit irritated in the middle, then wanted to finish to see what happened. It’s the story of a 40-ish African American woman, Nikki Lovejoy, from D.C. who goes to visit her grandmother (Mother Rita) in North Carolina. Mother Rita and her daughter, Nikki’s mother, have been seriously estranged for a number of years and Nikki doesn’t know what happened. What she finds in North Carolina is a fierce, proud, strong grandmother with a powerful connection to her mountain land, where she grows and sells flowers. But, she also learns the amazing history of her family, who, with a group of freedmen and women, trecked up to North Carolina after the Civil War and established their own kingdom, complete with royalty. And these were Nikki’s ancestors. When I realized that the story was based on true history, it suddenly became much more interesting. It was brand new history to me and deserves to be told. The author has to take liberties in making up a lot of the story of the ancestors; the book chapters alternate between the “Queen Luella” story and that of modern day Nikki. That worked well, but there is a lot of discussion of how the land was obtained and lost and it was here that I felt it bogged down. The estrangement was explained but somehow, for me at least, it lacked poignancy in the telling. Likewise with the relationships among the 4 living generations of Lovejoy women in the story (Rita, Nikki’s mother, Nikki, and her daughter). Nonetheless, it’s an interesting tale and I’m glad I read it.