Augusta: A Novel

"A historically evocative period drama that’s poignant and disquieting.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the author of Walking Home: Trail Stories, a gold and silver winner in the 2022 Human Relations Indie Book Award, Celia Ryker’s fiction debut is based on the true story of her grandmother, a woman who endured abuse and poverty at the turn of the twentieth century.

The historical novel begins in 1906 on a rural farm in Arkansas, where Augusta was raised on a hard-knock farm and married off to the widowed father of one of her classmates at the age of thirteen. They flee the failed cotton crops for factory work in Detroit, and Augusta must navigate city life alone as a new mother. Abandoned by her second husband, Augusta works as a waitress, but with four children to provide for, she is forced into a decision that will haunt her forever.