Jovelyn Richards, host of the Jovelyn’s Bistro program, discusses her new novel, Tulips for Evening, with Poet to Poet host Nina Serrano.
In Springfield, Arkansas in the late 1800s, the lives of a community of poor white southerners have been turned upside down by the Civil War. They are dealing with more than just death and loss – their laws have been changed, catapulting them against their will into the new era of freedom for Negroes.
When two powerful wealthy landowners, H.G. and his brother Grove, are murdered, and then their widows die of scarlet fever, Southern gossip swirls with rumors of patricide, betrayal, and suicide. But nothing rankles the white folks more than the rumor that five formerly enslaved Negro women are living in the old plantation house, Culver Tusk. Why and how did the women come to live there? Tensions grow in the small community, and nothing short of a confrontation will satisfy them.