Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother's monumental courage and the journey of a nation.īeautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis's The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last-glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life.
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