We are so pleased to announce that The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0™ selection. Click here to see Oprah talking about her selection.
A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family.
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.
Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream.
Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is her first novel.
Available in these formats:
HC: 9780385350280
Ebook: 9780385350303
Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 Digital Edition: 9780385350297
BOT CD: 9780804127271
BOT LDL: 9780804127288
Large Print: 9780804121026
Please note – the old ISBNs for this title are being cancelled. They are all listed here.
HC: 9780307959423
Ebook: 9780307959430
Large Print: 9780804120999
UAB DN: 9780449013021
UAB CD: 9780449013014