United States
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The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts
Three women uncover the secrets of a Georgia plantation that embodies the intertwined histories of Indigenous and enslaved Black communities-the fascinating debut novel, inspired by a true story, of the National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of All That She Carried, now featuring a new introduction and discussion guide.
"The Cherokee Rose is a mic drop-an instant classic. An invitation to listen to the urgent, sweet choruses of past and present."-Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST
Conducting research for her weekly history column, Jinx, a free-spirited Muscogee (Creek) historian, travels to Hold House, a Georgia plantation originally owned by Cherokee chief James Hold, to uncover the mystery of what happened to a tribal member who stayed behind after Indian removal, when Native Americans were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands in the nineteenth century.
At Hold House, she meets Ruth, a magazine writer visiting on assignment, and Cheyenne, a Southern Black debutante seeking to purchase the estate. Hovering above them all is the spirit of Mary Ann Battis, the young Indigenous woman who remained in Georgia more than a century earlier. When they discover a diary left on the property that reveals even more about the house's dark history, the three women's connections to the place grow deeper. Over a long holiday weekend, Cheyenne is forced to reconsider the property's rightful ownership, Jinx reexamines assumptions about her tribe's racial history, and Ruth confronts her own family's past traumas before surprising herself by falling into a new romance.
Imbued with a nuanced understanding of history, The Cherokee Rose brings the past to life as Jinx, Ruth, and Cheyenne unravel mysteries with powerful consequences for them all.
"The Cherokee Rose is a mic drop-an instant classic. An invitation to listen to the urgent, sweet choruses of past and present."-Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST
Conducting research for her weekly history column, Jinx, a free-spirited Muscogee (Creek) historian, travels to Hold House, a Georgia plantation originally owned by Cherokee chief James Hold, to uncover the mystery of what happened to a tribal member who stayed behind after Indian removal, when Native Americans were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands in the nineteenth century.
At Hold House, she meets Ruth, a magazine writer visiting on assignment, and Cheyenne, a Southern Black debutante seeking to purchase the estate. Hovering above them all is the spirit of Mary Ann Battis, the young Indigenous woman who remained in Georgia more than a century earlier. When they discover a diary left on the property that reveals even more about the house's dark history, the three women's connections to the place grow deeper. Over a long holiday weekend, Cheyenne is forced to reconsider the property's rightful ownership, Jinx reexamines assumptions about her tribe's racial history, and Ruth confronts her own family's past traumas before surprising herself by falling into a new romance.
Imbued with a nuanced understanding of history, The Cherokee Rose brings the past to life as Jinx, Ruth, and Cheyenne unravel mysteries with powerful consequences for them all.
Editorial Reviews
"Untold history blossoms vibrantly to life in Tiya Miles's The Cherokee Rose. A triumphant arrangement-part ghost story, part historical mystery told with modern flair. Miles seamlessly layers robust fact with immersive fiction in a revelatory investigation of Cherokee and Black American identity-a tale of division, unity, and awe-inspiring cultural resilience."-Afia Atakora, author of Conjure Women
"Poignant and essential storytelling."-Jason Mott, National Book Award–winning author of Hell of a Book
"Beautifully written and impeccably researched . . . Lovely."-Asha Lemmie, New York Times bestselling author of Fifty Words for Rain
"Tiya Miles tackles such a sensitive and complex topic with incredible wisdom, grace, honesty, and research. The Cherokee Rose is a fascinating exploration and enchanting examination of often hidden or misunderstood histories. It's so real and yet so magical; an extraordinary journey."-Robert Jones, Jr., author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
"Poignant and essential storytelling. That only begins to describe Tiya Miles's work. The Cherokee Rose is a book that, with a deft hand, illuminates a little-known, yet vitally important, facet of a past we all share. A wonderful read."-Jason Mott, National Book Award-winning author of Hell of a Book
"The history of the American slave-owning South is a history of erasures. With this novel, Tiya Miles overwrites the whitewashing, vibrantly imagining a complex and nuanced community within the Cherokee Nation where the lives of African Americans and Native Americans are interwoven in surprising and forgotten ways."-Alice Randall, author of The Wind Done Gone
"The Cherokee Rose is a great story, a skillfully woven mystery about the way history unfolds in individual li...
"Poignant and essential storytelling."-Jason Mott, National Book Award–winning author of Hell of a Book
"Beautifully written and impeccably researched . . . Lovely."-Asha Lemmie, New York Times bestselling author of Fifty Words for Rain
"Tiya Miles tackles such a sensitive and complex topic with incredible wisdom, grace, honesty, and research. The Cherokee Rose is a fascinating exploration and enchanting examination of often hidden or misunderstood histories. It's so real and yet so magical; an extraordinary journey."-Robert Jones, Jr., author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
"Poignant and essential storytelling. That only begins to describe Tiya Miles's work. The Cherokee Rose is a book that, with a deft hand, illuminates a little-known, yet vitally important, facet of a past we all share. A wonderful read."-Jason Mott, National Book Award-winning author of Hell of a Book
"The history of the American slave-owning South is a history of erasures. With this novel, Tiya Miles overwrites the whitewashing, vibrantly imagining a complex and nuanced community within the Cherokee Nation where the lives of African Americans and Native Americans are interwoven in surprising and forgotten ways."-Alice Randall, author of The Wind Done Gone
"The Cherokee Rose is a great story, a skillfully woven mystery about the way history unfolds in individual li...
Readers Top Reviews
Annette Johnson
I thought this book sounded really interesting. However it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Parts of it was really good but others not so much. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy
Short Excerpt Teaser
ONE
Jinx Micco walked the path to her Craftsman cottage, breathing a sigh of false relief. It used to be that after work, when she could be alone with her thoughts, was her favorite part of the day. But that had changed around the time her latest column was printed. She fumbled in her messenger bag for her keys, ignoring the ugly garden beds beside the doorway. If her great-aunt Angie had still been tending them, the beds would have overflowed with long-lashed black-eyed Susans and heavy-headed sunflowers. But nothing grew in those old plots now except for the odd clump of scrub grass, which Jinx knew her great-aunt would have immediately plucked.
She stepped into the husk of a house, inhaling in the musty smell of plaster. The place was hers now, its walls covered with a faded floral wallpaper, its furniture curve-backed and overstuffed, its rayon Kmart curtains edged in scratchy lace. Photographs of family members, framed and mounted, crowded the walls. Jinx was not a lace-and-flowers kind of person, but she had kept it all anyway. She hadn't changed a thing in this house since the inheritance-not the curtains, not the dishes, not the harvest-gold appliances. The 1920s cottage looked exactly as Aunt Angie had left it.
Jinx changed out of her cargo pants and slipped into comfy cutoff sweats. She unwound her hair from its braid to let it fall loosely around her face, a shade browner after countless walks in another Oklahoma summer. She sat in her great-aunt's easy chair and dove into one of Deb's charbroiled burgers, watching a rerun of Charlie's Angels on the old rabbit-ear TV. She wished she had strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. She was sure she had ordered a slice, but instead she had to settle for a handful of Now & Laters, her annoyance rising each time she unwrapped a single candy square.
Jinx washed her dinner plate, switched off the television, and raised the stiff windows. A moist breeze ruffled the curtains as she settled into her great-aunt's study to start her evening's work.
Angie Micco had been a pack rat, collecting any and every book on Muscogee history, saving each Sunday issue of the Muskogee Phoenix, and scouting out past editions of old Creek-area newspapers. She had century-old back issues of the Phoenix, the Eufaula Indian Journal, the Muskogee Comet, and the Muskogee Cimeter stacked to the roofline of the terra-cotta bungalow. Leaning over an open book at her great-aunt's desk, Jinx tried to focus on her research. But she couldn't shake the nagging sense that something was wrong. Ever since her last column, she had felt out of sorts. The source of her discomfort was not internal, like a stomachache or guilt pang; it was external, like a free-floating irritant. And now she was up against a deadline for her next installment of the "Indian Country Yesterday" column she had created. Her editor, a third cousin through a second marriage, was getting antsy. Read, she told herself. Focus.
She was supposed to be researching the Green Peach War of 1882, a major event in late-nineteenth-century Creek history. "Traditional" Creeks led by Chief Isparhecher, the ousted judge who wanted to maintain a tribal government, had waged a flash battle with "progressive" Creeks led by Principal Chief Checote, who wanted to run the Creek government like the United States. The traditionalists were the heroes of the story, the progressives glorified sellouts. Gray was just not a color she believed in. Back when she was taking graduate school seminars, she had never been one of those hesitant students who had trouble making up or speaking her mind. One professor who she knew didn't think she belonged there had even called her work "potentially polemical." She had shot back that he was "potentially racist" and asked why no Native American historians were on his syllabus. When it came to the black-and-white of Creek history, Jinx took a hard line. He gave her a C in the class, tantamount to an F in graduate school, and wrote in the margin of her final paper that her analysis "lacked sufficient nuance."
Jinx leaned sideways and plucked the folder on Chief Isparhecher from the People drawer of her great-aunt's filing cabinet. She loved that Aunt Angie had kept paper files on historical figures in the Creek Nation. She skimmed an old clipping on Isparhecher and his motley crew of anti-assimilationist activists, squinting at the tiny print and pushing back a loose skein of hair. She jotted down interesting points on her legal pad. Later, she would turn those ideas into an argument and send in her next column for the Muscogee Nation News.
Jinx's hand itched. Her legs were cramped. The pen felt awkward in her hand. Something was wrong in her great-aunt's house that ni...
Jinx Micco walked the path to her Craftsman cottage, breathing a sigh of false relief. It used to be that after work, when she could be alone with her thoughts, was her favorite part of the day. But that had changed around the time her latest column was printed. She fumbled in her messenger bag for her keys, ignoring the ugly garden beds beside the doorway. If her great-aunt Angie had still been tending them, the beds would have overflowed with long-lashed black-eyed Susans and heavy-headed sunflowers. But nothing grew in those old plots now except for the odd clump of scrub grass, which Jinx knew her great-aunt would have immediately plucked.
She stepped into the husk of a house, inhaling in the musty smell of plaster. The place was hers now, its walls covered with a faded floral wallpaper, its furniture curve-backed and overstuffed, its rayon Kmart curtains edged in scratchy lace. Photographs of family members, framed and mounted, crowded the walls. Jinx was not a lace-and-flowers kind of person, but she had kept it all anyway. She hadn't changed a thing in this house since the inheritance-not the curtains, not the dishes, not the harvest-gold appliances. The 1920s cottage looked exactly as Aunt Angie had left it.
Jinx changed out of her cargo pants and slipped into comfy cutoff sweats. She unwound her hair from its braid to let it fall loosely around her face, a shade browner after countless walks in another Oklahoma summer. She sat in her great-aunt's easy chair and dove into one of Deb's charbroiled burgers, watching a rerun of Charlie's Angels on the old rabbit-ear TV. She wished she had strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. She was sure she had ordered a slice, but instead she had to settle for a handful of Now & Laters, her annoyance rising each time she unwrapped a single candy square.
Jinx washed her dinner plate, switched off the television, and raised the stiff windows. A moist breeze ruffled the curtains as she settled into her great-aunt's study to start her evening's work.
Angie Micco had been a pack rat, collecting any and every book on Muscogee history, saving each Sunday issue of the Muskogee Phoenix, and scouting out past editions of old Creek-area newspapers. She had century-old back issues of the Phoenix, the Eufaula Indian Journal, the Muskogee Comet, and the Muskogee Cimeter stacked to the roofline of the terra-cotta bungalow. Leaning over an open book at her great-aunt's desk, Jinx tried to focus on her research. But she couldn't shake the nagging sense that something was wrong. Ever since her last column, she had felt out of sorts. The source of her discomfort was not internal, like a stomachache or guilt pang; it was external, like a free-floating irritant. And now she was up against a deadline for her next installment of the "Indian Country Yesterday" column she had created. Her editor, a third cousin through a second marriage, was getting antsy. Read, she told herself. Focus.
She was supposed to be researching the Green Peach War of 1882, a major event in late-nineteenth-century Creek history. "Traditional" Creeks led by Chief Isparhecher, the ousted judge who wanted to maintain a tribal government, had waged a flash battle with "progressive" Creeks led by Principal Chief Checote, who wanted to run the Creek government like the United States. The traditionalists were the heroes of the story, the progressives glorified sellouts. Gray was just not a color she believed in. Back when she was taking graduate school seminars, she had never been one of those hesitant students who had trouble making up or speaking her mind. One professor who she knew didn't think she belonged there had even called her work "potentially polemical." She had shot back that he was "potentially racist" and asked why no Native American historians were on his syllabus. When it came to the black-and-white of Creek history, Jinx took a hard line. He gave her a C in the class, tantamount to an F in graduate school, and wrote in the margin of her final paper that her analysis "lacked sufficient nuance."
Jinx leaned sideways and plucked the folder on Chief Isparhecher from the People drawer of her great-aunt's filing cabinet. She loved that Aunt Angie had kept paper files on historical figures in the Creek Nation. She skimmed an old clipping on Isparhecher and his motley crew of anti-assimilationist activists, squinting at the tiny print and pushing back a loose skein of hair. She jotted down interesting points on her legal pad. Later, she would turn those ideas into an argument and send in her next column for the Muscogee Nation News.
Jinx's hand itched. Her legs were cramped. The pen felt awkward in her hand. Something was wrong in her great-aunt's house that ni...
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