Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Happy Land is a novel that dares to dig into the soil of memory—both personal and collective—and plant seeds of history long overlooked. Set against the breathtaking but bruised backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the novel stitches together ancestral voices and modern wounds to explore how land, legacy, and loss shape who we are. With a narrative that blends historical fiction, generational drama, and near-mythical storytelling, Perkins-Valdez takes her readers on a slow, winding pilgrimage into the heart of Black Appalachian resistance.
It is ambitious. It is poignant. But it is also uneven, weighed down at times by a structure that pulls between too many timelines and tones.
Plot Summary: Two Women, One Land, Many Stories
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez opens in present-day North Carolina as Nikki Lovejoy-Berry, a weary D.C. real estate agent grappling with her stagnant career and aimless daughter, receives a cryptic summons from her estranged grandmother, Mother Rita. What follows is less of a welcome than a reckoning.
As Nikki journeys to the ancestral Lovejoy land tucked in Zirconia, North Carolina, she’s drawn into an oral and spiritual inheritance she never knew existed. Her visit unveils the story of her great-great-great-grandmother, Luella Bobo—a formerly enslaved woman who co-founded the real Kingdom of the Happy Land, a Black utopia established by freed people after the Civil War.
Told in alternating narratives between Nikki and Luella, the novel bridges centuries. While Nikki tries to make sense of her fractured family, Luella’s story unveils a rich, hidden chapter of postbellum history: a group of formerly enslaved families who fled South Carolina and carved out a sovereign community in the Appalachian wilderness.
The two storylines echo each other in emotion and urgency, culminating in Nikki’s realization that reclaiming land also means reclaiming identity.
Character Analysis: Rooted Women and Their Inherited Wars
Nikki Lovejoy-Berry
Nikki is not a heroine of epic proportions—she’s tired, skeptical, and emotionally adrift. And that’s what makes her deeply real. Her initial reluctance to dive into her family’s Southern past mirrors a generational detachment many modern descendants of enslaved people feel. Perkins-Valdez writes Nikki not as a torchbearer but as a woman fumbling in the dark for a flame, gradually understanding that history isn’t dead—it’s buried.
Mother Rita
A formidable matriarch, Mother Rita is steeped in mystery, contradiction, and pride. Her brusque demeanor shields a tender legacy, and she is as much a custodian of secrets as she is a gardener of flowers and graves. Perkins-Valdez subtly paints her as both a generational wound and its healer, embodying the unresolved tension between remembering and repressing.
Luella Bobo
The novel’s most vivid and poetic passages belong to Luella. Through her, we enter a world where post-slavery life brims with new danger and delicate hope. Her love story with William Montgomery, her father’s dignity, and her inner fire to build community elevate her beyond ancestor-figure into a historical heroine deserving of her own novel.
Thematic Depth: What Happy Land Is Really About
1. The Mythology of Freedom
Luella’s journey from a plantation called Lily of the Valley to the wooded hills of North Carolina reflects the real contradictions of Black freedom post-Emancipation. Perkins-Valdez doesn’t idealize this period; she shows the violence, betrayal, and broken promises—but also the courage to imagine something better.
2. Inheritance Beyond DNA
The novel suggests that inheritance isn’t just genetic. It’s spatial, emotional, and spiritual. The family graveyard with its unmarked stones, the flowers Mother Rita cultivates, the boots Nikki borrows to walk her land—all symbolize how lineage seeps into everyday rituals.
3. Matriarchal Silence and Storytelling
At its core, Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is about Black women who carry stories they cannot say aloud. Nikki’s yearning to know the past is met by the gatekeeping of women like her mother and grandmother. The result is not just familial tension but historical loss. When stories are withheld, so is healing.
4. Reclamation and Resistance
The land in Happy Land is not a passive backdrop; it is an active battleground. It must be protected, understood, and honored. Perkins-Valdez deftly uses the land as a metaphor for Black self-determination—whether in the Kingdom of the Happy Land or in a simple vegetable garden.
Writing Style: An Author at the Crossroads of Poetry and Prose
Dolen Perkins-Valdez writes with the lyrical pulse of someone in conversation with the past. The Luella chapters, in particular, sing with a cadence reminiscent of Toni Morrison or Jesmyn Ward. The dialect is rich but never cartoonish. The descriptive passages—especially of the Appalachian landscape—are textured and reverent.
However, the Nikki chapters occasionally stumble. The prose is accessible but sometimes lapses into exposition-heavy dialogue. There are moments when characters speak not to each other but for the reader’s benefit, which slightly interrupts the immersion.
Still, Perkins-Valdez deserves credit for balancing two vastly different timelines and for infusing a little-known historical phenomenon with grace and grit.
Strengths: Why Happy Land Deserves to Be Read
- Authentic Historical Reimagining: The novel resurrects the real Kingdom of the Happy Land—an actual Black community formed post-slavery—and brings it into mainstream literary awareness.
- Multigenerational Resonance: With three generations of Black women wrestling with identity, forgiveness, and belonging, the book appeals across age groups.
- Rich Setting: From the wildflower paths of Mother Rita’s garden to the treacherous mountain journey of Luella and her people, the sense of place is evocative and immersive.
- Spiritual Undertones: Without becoming preachy, the novel pulses with spiritual inquiry—what does it mean to be chosen? What does it mean to belong?
Weaknesses: Where the Novel Falters
- Uneven Pacing: The modern storyline often lacks the urgency and narrative tension of the historical one. Nikki’s chapters occasionally feel like they are stalling, waiting for Luella’s to shine.
- Predictable Family Drama: The generational rift between Nikki, her mother Lorelle, and Mother Rita feels familiar, even cliché, at times. Some emotional beats are underdeveloped.
- Underexplored Side Characters: Readers may crave more dimension from figures like Robert Montgomery, Jola, or even Shawnie (Nikki’s daughter). They function more as background than as emotionally engaging counterparts.
Comparisons and Context
If you enjoyed:
- Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson
- The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.
…then Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez should be on your list. It continues Perkins-Valdez’s commitment to unearthing buried narratives of Black history—this time focusing on a utopia imagined and realized by freedpeople in the Reconstruction era.
This is Perkins-Valdez’s third published novel, following her critically acclaimed Take My Hand and Wench. While Wench explored the lives of enslaved mistresses at a Southern resort, and Take My Hand dove into the sterilization of Black women in the 1970s, Happy Land stands as her most ambitious yet mythic work.
Final Verdict: A Kingdom Worth Remembering
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a book of bold ambition. It seeks to bridge generations, landscapes, and legacies. While it doesn’t always succeed structurally, it does succeed emotionally. It asks necessary questions: What happens when history is buried in the ground—both literally and figuratively? And who gets to decide whether the past is myth or memory?
For readers of historical fiction who crave stories that blend truth with legend, Happy Land offers a narrative rooted in both pain and power. Despite its pacing flaws and occasionally repetitive emotional arcs, it earns its place among books that don’t just entertain—they excavate.
Would I Recommend It?
Yes—especially for:
- Readers interested in Reconstruction-era Black history
- Fans of multigenerational fiction with strong female protagonists
- Book clubs looking for rich thematic discussion (inheritance, land rights, maternal conflict)