Father Damien Modeste has served the Ojibwe on the remote reservation of Little No Horse for more than half a century, and as he nears the end of his life, he begins to fear that if the tribe discovers he is really a woman who has lived a man's life, all of his hard work will be undone.

For some, "passing" means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don't willingly pass but are "passed" in specific situations by someone else. We Wear the Mask, edited by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page, is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white...

Luna--or depending on who's asking, Rose--is the white-passing daughter of an immigrant mother who has seen what happens to people from her culture. This world is prejudicial, and she must hide her identity in pursuit of owning an illegal jazz club. Using her cunning powers, Rose negotiates with dangerous criminals as she climbs up Kansas City's bootlegging ladder. Luna, however, runs the risk of losing everything if the crooked city councilmen and...

In Washington, D.C., in the 1950s, Adam Sunraider, a race-baiting senator from a New England state, is mortally wounded by an assassin's bullet while making a speech on the Senate floor. To the shock of all who think they know him, Sunraider calls out from his deathbed for Hickman, an old black minister, to be brought to his side. The Reverend is summoned; the two are left alone. Out of their conversation, and the inner rhythms of memories whose weight...

"When Springville residents--at least the ones still alive--are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation...Maddy did it. An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has...

As the War for Independence wore on into the 1780s, unrest ruled the Carolinas. Settlers who had cleared the land after the Cherokees withdrew were being mustered for battle as British forces pillaged their hard-won farms. Robert Morgan's stunning novel tells a story of two people caught in the chaos raging in the wilderness. After sixteen-year-old Josie Summers murders her abusive stepfather, she runs away from home disguised as a boy. Lost in the...

Julia Hoffman has always enjoyed a carefree life with her well-to-do family, but when she becomes an Army nurse during the Civil War, her eyes are opened to the injustices of the world around her.

Cecilia Valdés, de Cirilo Villaverde, es la novela cubana más importante del siglo XIX. Su título completo es Cecilia Valdés o La Loma del Ángel y se publicó en Nueva York en el año 1882. Per­tenece al movimiento romántico, aunque no está exenta de pinceladas realistas y costumbristas. La novela se estructura en cuatro partes, que abarcan el periodo histórico comprendido entre 1812 y 1831. El propósito de Villaverde, como él mismo declara,...

"A prize-winning historian tells a new story of the black experience in America through the life of a mysterious entrepreneur. To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxuryapartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor...

"The stunning and provocative coming-of-age memoir about Sarah Valentine's childhood as a white girl in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and her discovery that her father was a black man. At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered that she was not, in fact, the white girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race. And so Sarah...