Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas

As Celeste gets to know her fellow activists and the people of Pineyville, she grapples with her father's disapproval of her decision to go to Mississippi. A numbers-running bar owner in Detroit, Shuck Tyree is proud of his daughter and proud of the opportunities he's provided for her: Celeste risking what he's offered by going to the violent South is not what he had planned. Long estranged from her mother, Celeste is rocked by revelations of wrenching details of her past. At the same time, she develops a deep relationship with the woman hosting her in Mississippi, Geneva Owens, who helps Celeste learn more about what it means to be an adult woman and a "person of substance" in the world.

Denise Nicholas is an actor who starred in the TV series Room 222 and In the Heat of the Night, among many other TV, film, and theatrical productions. Freshwater Road is her first novel. Before her career as a TV star, Denise Nicholas worked with the Free Southern Theater in Mississippi in 1964, and in Freshwater Road she reaches back to bring that summer alive in this unforgettable first novel. Freshwater Road will prove to be one of the best and most important novels ever written about the civil rights movement in America.