One Night in Georgia

Book excerpt: Three Black women take a road trip into the dark heart of the Civil Rights era in this “rich, devastating” novel set in the summer of 1968 (Publishers Weekly). At the end of a sweltering summer shaped by the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, race riots, political protests, and the birth of Black power, three coeds from New York City—Zelda Livingston, Veronica Cook, and Daphne Brooks—pack into Veronica’s new Ford Fairlane convertible, bound for Atlanta and their last year at Spelman College. It is the beginning a journey that will change their lives irrevocably. Unlikely friends from vastly different backgrounds, the trio has been inseparable since freshman year. Zelda, the heir of rebellious slaves and freedom riders, sees the world in black versus white. Veronica, the daughter of a refined, wealthy family, believes in integration and racial uplift. Daphne lives with a legacy of loss—when she was five years old, her black mother committed suicide and her white father abandoned her. Though they are young and carefree, they aren’t foolish. They rely on the Motorist Green Book to find racially friendly locations for gas, rest, and food. Yet as they approach the Mason-Dixon line, tension begins to rise. And when the car breaks down in Georgia, they are caught up in a racially hostile situation that leaves a white person dead and one of the girls holding the gun. A Harper’s Bazaar Best Summer Read of 2019