New Books In Historical Fiction

Today I talked to Trisha R. Thomas about her new novel What Passes as Love (Lake Union Publishing, 2021). In 1850, at age six, Dahlia Holt is taken from the only home she knows and moved into the big house to serve her two older sisters. They share a father, who owns the house and its slaves. On her sixteenth birthday, Dahlia gets to dress up in one of the sister’s discarded dresses for a trip to the city. There, she gets separated from her family, and meets a young Englishman who thinks she’s white. She introduces herself as an orphan without a family. It starts out as a lark, but her adventures could destroy those she left behind. Especially after her father puts a high bounty on her head, because she is, after all, a runaway slave. TRISHA R. THOMAS won the Literary Lion Award from the King County Library Foundation. Her first book, Nappily Ever After, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature as well as being featured in O Magazine’s Books That Make a Difference. Her work has been