Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's new novel is The Revisioners.

From the transcript of her interview with NPR's Scott Simon:

SCOTT SIMON, HOST: "The Revisioners" is a story that ties together women of different generations in a family line of different races that spans more than a century. It opens with Ava, mixed-race, single mother who moves in with Martha, her declining white grandmother and is brought closure to the story and spirit of Josephine, her other grandmother's great grandmother who escaped from slavery as a child to become a landowner and a matriarch. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's new book is "The Revisioners." And she joins us from the studios of Youth Radio in Oakland. Thanks so much for being with us.

MARGARET WILKERSON SEXTON: Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.

SIMON: Tell us about Ms. Josephine, the overwhelming major character.

SEXTON: So Josephine is a former enslaved woman and a former sharecropper. And though she has that very haunting history, she's flourishing in 1924. She's in our '70s. She's widowed. But she has huge family support. She's lucked upon owning a 300-acre farm. So she has resources that she never would have imagined having. And she's doing well when we meet her. However, this is the year that a white woman next door. And Josephine is reticent at first. But soon, they do form this cautious relationship that grows until Josephine discovers that the neighbor is a member of the women's branch of the KKK. And then many, many, many generations later, we have Ava, who is a biracial woman, as you said, and who is financially strapped and is - and decides to move in with her white grandmother. But soon, her grandmother's behavior becomes erratic and even racist. And...[read on]

Visit Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue