In early 2020, I made up my mind that I wanted to write a love story. Separated from my family and friends during the height of the pandemic and emotionally raw from living alone, I wanted to write something where I already knew the ending from the beginning: the characters would win. How they got there would be the most difficult part. I was inspired by the oeuvres of Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez, and I wanted my fourth book to be vast in scope, rich in history and intertwined with familial lineages. But the work would demand plot development as well as historical research and I needed someone to help me.
I began interviewing assistants and came across a fellow Black female Harlemite from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Immediately, we clicked over a video chat and soon after, she emailed me a document she said I just had to see. The attachment revealed a four-page, cursive letter that dated back to 4 February 1863. Gorgeously maintained and preserved, the letter was written by a woman named Maria who took dictation from an enslaved man named James Tate of West Point, Georgia.
