The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts

· Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Tiya Miles and Shayna Small
Audiobook
10 hr 30 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
Want a 12 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

Three women uncover the secrets of a Georgia plantation that embodies the intertwined histories of Indigenous and enslaved Black communities—the fascinating debut novel, inspired by a true story, of the National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of All That She Carried, now featuring a new introduction and discussion guide.

The Cherokee Rose is a mic drop—an instant classic. An invitation to listen to the urgent, sweet choruses of past and present.”—Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST


Conducting research for her weekly history column, Jinx, a free-spirited Muscogee (Creek) historian, travels to Hold House, a Georgia plantation originally owned by Cherokee chief James Hold, to uncover the mystery of what happened to a tribal member who stayed behind after Indian removal, when Native Americans were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands in the nineteenth century.

At Hold House, she meets Ruth, a magazine writer visiting on assignment, and Cheyenne, a Southern Black debutante seeking to purchase the estate. Hovering above them all is the spirit of Mary Ann Battis, the young Indigenous woman who remained in Georgia more than a century earlier. When they discover a diary left on the property that reveals even more about the house’s dark history, the three women’s connections to the place grow deeper. Over a long holiday weekend, Cheyenne is forced to reconsider the property’s rightful ownership, Jinx reexamines assumptions about her tribe’s racial history, and Ruth confronts her own family’s past traumas before surprising herself by falling into a new romance.

Imbued with a nuanced understanding of history, The Cherokee Rose brings the past to life as Jinx, Ruth, and Cheyenne unravel mysteries with powerful consequences for them all.

About the author

Tiya Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the author of All That She Carried, a New York Times bestseller that won the National Book Award for nonfiction, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, and several other prizes. She is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award, and her book The Dawn of Detroit received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Additionally, Miles is the author of Ties That Bind, The House on Diamond Hill, and Tales from the Haunted South.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.