The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

Author: Ayana Mathis
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013
Pages: 320
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd, swept up by the tides of the Great Migration, flees Georgia and heads north. Full of hope, she settles in Philadelphia to build a better life. Instead she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment, and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins are lost to an illness that a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit, mettle, and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them to meet a world that will not be kind. Their lives, captured here in twelve luminous threads, tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage—and a nation's tumultuous journey.

Rating: This is a tough book to review/rate. I chose Do Not Recommend, but don't feel good about that decision. On the other hand, I can't exactly recommend it because it was disjointed and the last chapter didn't tie up anything. I give it three stars so take from that what you will.

I loved the concept, and did feel as though I got a sense of who Hattie was through her children, which is what the book promised. I came to think of this as a draft novel. It needed just a bit more editing to be really really good. I can appreciate the effort though.

This was on my "to-read" list for a couple years, and unbeknownst to me it is also an Oprah's Book Club book which fulfilled a requirement for my 2016 Reading Challenge.