Queen Sugar

The inspiration for the acclaimed OWN TV series produced by Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay

"Queen Sugar is a page-turning, heart-breaking novel of the new south, where the past is never truly past, but the future is a hot, bright promise. This is a story of family and the healing power of our connections—to each other, and to the rich land beneath our feet."
—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

Readers, booksellers, and critics alike are embracing Queen Sugar and cheering for its heroine, Charley Bordelon, an African American woman and single mother struggling to build a new life amid the complexities of the contemporary South.

When Charley unexpectedly inherits eight hundred acres of sugarcane land, she and her eleven-year-old daughter say goodbye to smoggy Los Angeles and head to Louisiana. She soon learns, however, that cane farming is always going to be a white man’s business. As the sweltering summer unfolds, Charley struggles to balance the overwhelming challenges of a farm in decline with the demands of family and the startling desires of her own heart.

Natalie Baszile has a master’s degree in Afro-American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers where she was a Holden Minority Scholar. Queen Sugar has been made into a dramatic television series, produced for OWN by Warner Horizon Television. Baszile lives in San Francisco with her family.