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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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QUEEN SUGAR

Natalie Baszile

Why exactly her late father left her eight hundred acres of prime sugarcane land in Louisiana is as mysterious as it is generous. But for Charley Bordelon, it's also an opportunity start over: to get away from the smog and sprawl of Los Angeles, and to grow a new life in the coffee-dark soil of the Gulf coast.
Accompanied by her daughter Mika—who is not happy about relocating from L.A to St. Josephine—Charley arrives with high hopes and just in time for growing season. But the abrupt departure of the farm manager suddenly leaves her without a crucial piece of the puzzle: someone who knows how to grow sugarcane.

Rolling up her sleeves, and swallowing her pride, Charley enlists the help of the town in managing her inheritance. As the cane grows, her patience is tested by an unruly brother-in-law who is quickly using up his second chances, and it will take all of her heart to keep the sugar growing and her family intact.

QUEEN SUGAR is full of life and is bound to live beyond the page. Like Charley, readers will fall in love with the characters of St. Josephine; like her grandmother, Miss Honey, they will wish that they never had to leave.

Natalie Baszile has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA and earned an M.F.A. at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers where she was a Holden Minority Scholar. She lives in San Francisco with her family and is a member of the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto.

QUEEN SUGAR won the Hurston/Wright College Writer’s Award and was runner-up in the Faulkner Pirate’s Alley novel-in-progress competition. Excerpts have appeared in ZYZZYVA and Cairn. Natalie won the Sylvia Clare Brown fellowship at Ragdale, and has also been a resident at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Hedgebrook.
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Book

Published 2014-02-06 by Pamela Dorman Books

Book

Published 2014-02-06 by Pamela Dorman Books

Comments

Queen Sugar is an accomplished, confident narrative that announces the arrival of a writer to watch.

Natalie Baszile debuts with an irresistible tale of family, community, personal obligation, and personal reinvention. The world is full of things that keep you down and things that lift you up—Queen Sugar is about both and in approximately equal measure. Smart and heart-felt and highly recommended.

Reading this book is inhabiting, briefly, the backbreaking and brutal yet rewarding life that is sugarcane farming….Queen Sugaris an impressive debut from a talented writer and a fascinating look into the world of the contemporary South.

Raw with hardship and tender with hope, Queen Sugar digs deep to the core of a courageous young widow’s life as she struggles to keep her farm in Louisiana’s sugarcane country. Natalie Baszile writes with a bold and steady hand.

TV tie-in opportunity for a series based on Natalie Baszile’s QUEEN SUGAR. Ava DuVernay's "highly-anticipated" 13-episode series inspired by Natalie Baszile's novel and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey, will debut as a two-night event on Tuesday, September 6 and Wednesday, September 7 at 10 p.m. on OWN. The project stars Rutina Wesley (TRUE BLOOD), Dawn-Lyen Gardner and Kofi Siriboe. It has already been renewed for a second season and has received a frenzy of media coverage. Rave reviews are just starting to roll in, with Hollywood Reporter already declaring it “another summer winner for OWN.” Read more...

Baszile infuses her novel with flickers of poetic detail and spot-on observations…Queen Sugargets props for its charming characters and enthralling, fully realized setting.

A nuanced evocation of contemporary black life.

Queen Sugar is a page-turning, heart-breaking novel of the new south, where the past is never truly past, but the future is a hot, bright promise. This is a story of family and the healing power of our connections—to each other, and to the rich land beneath our feet.

Natalie Baszile’s Queen Sugar is a sweeping, beautifully wrought, and uniquely American story that brings to vibrant life the little known world of Louisiana’s sugarcane country. I fell in love with Charley Bordelon—her huge heart, her kindness, her courage, and her resilience. A lyrical and page-turning meditation on second chances, reinvention, family, and race, Queen Sugar casts quite a spell.

After turning the last page of Queen Sugar, I already miss the gutsy, contemporary African American woman who ditches California and migrates to Louisiana to run her inherited cane farm. Natalie Baszile is a fresh, new voice that resists all Southern stereotypes, and delivers an authentic knock-out read.

In her heartfelt and beautiful debut novel, Natalie Baszile tells a tale of the South that is as deeply rooted in time and place as it is universal. How do we make sense of family? Loss? The legacies passed down to us? These are the questions that Charley, a young widowed mother, grapples with, as she tries to save the sugarcane plantation that is her inheritance and which, unbeknownst to her, holds the answers to both her past and her future.

Queen Sugaris a gorgeous, moving story about what grounds us as brothers and sisters, as mothers and daughters, and all the ways we fight to save each other. Natalie Baszile’s characters put brave roots into inhospitable ground, looking for a place, a person, a community to call home. I alternately laughed and wept as they failed each other, forgave each other, lost each other, found themselves. It’s a wise, strong book, and I loved it. You will, too.

InQueen Sugar, two bulwarks of American literature—Southern fiction and the transformational journey—are given a fresh take by talented first time novelist Natalie Baszile . . . [the novel] is a sensory experience, a tableau vivant that Baszile skillfully paints in a palette simultaneously subtle and bold.Queen Sugaris a bright and enticing reminder that, sometimes, you can go home.

Gorgeous . . . an exquisitely written book about the joys and sorrows of family, love, endurance, and hard work.