What can readers learn about our contemporary world from the world of 1936 Georgia depicted in When Stars Rain Down?

I started writing When Stars Rain Down towards the end of the Obama administration. It was both interesting and sad to see so much of the divisive rhetoric rear its head in modern society just as I was writing about the tumultuous days of the 1930s. Being Black in America has always been challenging. The Black people in my fictional town of Parsons, GA wanted three main things – the same things Black people have been craving from America since we first were kidnapped and brought to this land and that is: peace, the freedom to live our lives, and the space to be productive members of our various communities. Most of the white citizens of Parsons, GA were open to that desire of the Black citizens, but it only took a few fringe members to create much of the chaos found in my novel. Sadly, I saw a lot of that mirrored in society and unfortunately, I was able to not only pull from the past, but I was also able to pull from the present. I think the good thing that came out of life imitating art, is that is became clear to me that books like mine are designed to entertain, but to also be a cautionary tale.

Despite the hardships your characters face, your stories are full of hope. How do you write stories that acknowledge the darkness and strife in the world while maintaining a message of hope?

As a Black woman in her 50s who grew up in the segregated south, hope was sometimes the only food available to feed our souls, so I cannot imagine writing a story, no matter how tragic it might be, without leaving my readers feeling like as bad as things are, the characters will ultimately be all right. The first time my daddy took me to the 16thStreet Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL when I was about five or six, I knew of the 4 little girls who had gotten murdered there. As a Black child of the south, we were schooled from a very early age about segregation, racial hatred and violence. I remember asking daddy, “Will those bad men be there today?” Daddy looked at me sadly and said, “Not today. God willing.” That was all Daddy could offer me. Hope. But for that day, and for many days afterwards, that hope was sustaining. It wasn’t filling, but it was enough. The first draft I wrote of When Stars Rain Down didn’t sit right with me but especially the ending. I felt like I had beaten up my readers, chapter after chapter, and I had left Opal without much to look forward to in life – translation, I had stolen her hope. Instinctively, I knew both she and the reader needed and deserved hope, so, in the rewrite, I made sure I gave it to them. Readers will go on almost any journey you want to take them on, but at some point, they need a lifeline. Hopefully, the reader will walk away from this book feeling that I did just that – threw them a lifeline.