Happy Land is the Reading Across Rhode Island title for 2026. The book was inspired by a true story of a secret community of formerly enslaved people in the Appalachians.
Author Dolan Perkins-Valdez says Happy Land has been well-received in Rhode Island, and has sparked an interest in readers to find and share stories that shine a light on local aspects of African American history. She spoke with Ocean State Media morning host Luis Hernandez about her novel, its inspiration, and its message.
Interview highlights
On how she discovered the North Carolina community that inspired Happy Land
Dolan Perkins-Valdez: I just happened into it. I was researching Western North Carolina old-time musicians during the pandemic [in] the summer of 2021, and I stumbled on this story that I couldn’t believe. These people had created this community. They had called themselves royalty and they had established a kingdom.
They created their own system of self-governance. They established a communal treasury where they contributed their money, but I never found evidence that they voted again or that they participated in anything regarding American democracy.
On how different approaches to generational history influenced the writing of Happy Land
Perkins-Valdez: When I first started writing the book, I did a lot of family tree illustration. So I was really trying to make sure I was understanding when people were born, when they died, and how it all tied in. But one of the things I think about families is that sometimes the history can lay dormant during certain generations. Some generations are really into the family history and then others are not. I was trying to create the texture of an actual family where Laurel, Nikki’s mother, doesn’t want to hear anything about all that kingdom talk. She just wants to live her life. She leaves North Carolina, never to return. And then you have Nikki, her daughter, who’s like, “Well, what is this story?” And is very interested in what the story means for her and what it means for her daughter. So you do have these generational women with different relationships to the history. And I think that’s realistic for most families.
On her motivation for writing Happy Land
Perkins-Valdez: When I was in school, they told me that after Reconstruction ended, all we had was violence from the Ku Klux Klan, or everybody was a sharecropper and didn’t own their land. And so one of the things that I loved about this story when I discovered it was that this was a story about Black entrepreneurship, Black ingenuity, Black ambition. These people wanted to create their own American story. They wanted to buy the land, which they eventually did. They created a product, the Happy Land Linement, which – by all accounts in real life, in the history – was wildly successful. And so they were entrepreneurs. They were community-minded. I never found any evidence that somebody stole from the treasury or that the community imploded or anything like that. They got along. It was all successful.
I wanted to write a story that pushed back against the common narrative of violence and sharecropping and despair and showed something about Black hope. And so I was really immersed in that part of the story. I won’t say that it surprised me, but it really heartened me and it made me think, well, this is the story I wanted to write about post-Reconstruction America.
On the reaction to Happy Land in Rhode Island
Perkins-Valdez: What I’ve been hearing from people is that there was an intentional community here in Rhode Island. I’ve been hearing stories about that and people are also very interested in excavating some of the African American history here and bringing it to light. So my hope is that this will encourage Rhode Islanders to find those remarkable stories here in the archives of the state, so-called tiny stories that are actually extraordinary.
