A novel with a paper trail
Mollie Ringgold is born enslaved on an Arkansas plantation and learns to hide her gift for numbers. After one night sends her running, she makes her way to Greenwood. In Tulsa's Black district she finds freedom and choices no one expected her to have. The novel began with a stack of 1800s land papers that Alvin Franklin's grandmother kept for decades. Alvin has cared for them for more than twenty years.
Good Golly Ms. Mollie grew from real family papers. Three bound abstracts of title passed from Alvin's grandmother through his father and eventually to him. Their entries reach back to 1837. They describe Lucy Beasley's land in Pulaski County, Arkansas. They also record the 1857 court proceedings that divided her estate and the people her family held in bondage. David Jacobs used those papers to imagine Mollie Ringgold and a life that takes her from Arkansas to Greenwood.
The papers
Alvin wanted to check his papers before sharing them. He called the Arkansas State Archives and read an archivist the citations Book F page 587 and Book C page 332. About half an hour later the archivist called back and confirmed that the state's copies matched Alvin's originals. The research that followed found a name for the girl described in the 1856 papers by her age and price.
The authors
David Jacobs wrote the novel from the story Alvin S. Franklin brought him. They met while working for the City of Huntsville transit system, where Alvin trained David on the buses. DNS Books means David and Stone. It combines David's first name with Alvin's middle name.
More from DNS Books
Every copy ordered here is signed by the authors and ships from Huntsville, Alabama.
