Willow's Secrets

In the starving years after the Civil War, a girl is born in the northern hills of Alabama. The mother dies, and the heart-broken grandmother gives the precious child to strangers to raise as their own. Rambunctious and inquisitive, the little girl wants to "know everything." Yet she finds herself surrounded by secrets. Who can she ask? Who can she tell?

Sally Bermanzohn has ancestral roots in northwest Alabama where Indian Annie's story takes place. She grew up in New York and in the 1960s went south for college. In North Carolina she became deeply involved in the movements for civil rights, women's equality, and labor movements. In 1979 she participated in a demonstration when the Ku Klux Klan attacked, killing five people and critically wounding her husband. Years later, Sally earned a PhD at City University of New York, and taught at Brooklyn College. Now a grandmother, she resides with her husband in the Hudson Valley.