About the book

Mollie Ringgold learned young that there were things about herself she could not afford to let people see. Born enslaved on an Arkansas plantation, she has an uncommon gift for numbers and an eye sharp enough to catch a gambler cheating across a crowded table. Her master finds those talents useful, but Mollie understands that being too clever can be dangerous.

Then one night leaves a woman dead and Mollie running for her life. She reaches Tulsa with little more than her wits and the chance to become someone no one owns. There she finds love, work, and a growing Black community full of people building businesses and futures of their own.

Mollie wants a piece of that future, and Bishop "The Bull" Douglas can give her one. His saloon puts her talents to work again, and before long she has money in her pocket and a place inside an empire built as much on fear as opportunity. The life she once could not imagine having is suddenly hers, but Bishop keeps accounts of his own.

By the time Mollie understands the price of doing business in his world, walking away may be the one thing he will not allow. Inspired by century-old family documents, Good Golly Ms. Mollie follows one woman's path from an Arkansas plantation to the dangerous promise of Greenwood. There, freedom brings Mollie choices no one ever expected her to have, and consequences she alone will carry.

From the front of the book

This book began as a stack of paper more than a century old. Alvin Franklin has kept those documents for more than twenty years, handed down through his grandmother. In their pages is a real woman named Lucy Beasley, who was widowed in Pulaski County, Arkansas, and inherited her husband's land.

Mollie Ringgold is what David Jacobs imagined when Alvin brought him that story. The novel carries her farther than the record does, all the way to the streets of Greenwood. The record never leaves Arkansas.

The rest of Lucy's story still belongs to her.

What is true and what is fiction

Readers often want to know how much of the story happened.

True: Lucy Beasley was a widow in Pulaski County, Arkansas. Her husband Wiley's 1833 will gave her a life interest in about 280 acres. In 1837 she entered another 40 acres in her own name. She raised nine children on the land and held it for twenty-three years before her death in August 1856. Her family held enslaved people. In 1857 a county court ordered the land sold and the estate divided among her heirs. The abstracts Alvin's family kept record these events. The Arkansas State Archives holds the same records.

Fiction: David Jacobs created Mollie Ringgold and her mother Anna. John Gilliam and his household are also invented. So are the saloon and Bishop "The Bull" Douglas. Everything that happens in Tulsa belongs to the novel. The Beasley record stays in Arkansas. The Gilliam name comes from Thomas Gilliam in the papers. He was Lucy's son-in-law and later administered her estate. David gave that surname to an invented man.

For generations Alvin's family has described Lucy as a Black woman raised by the Gilliams. The land records never state her race and contain no record of an adoption. They show a widow managing her own farm in her own name in 1830s Arkansas. They also show that her family owned other people. A second book is planned to tell the documented story. It will put the family's account beside the records so readers can follow them page by page.

Details

Written by David Jacobs.
Story by Alvin S. Franklin.
Format: This hardcover has 158 pages and measures 5.5 by 8.5 inches.
Publisher: Obol House is an imprint of Huntsville Independent Press in Huntsville, Alabama.
Published: The book was published in 2026.
ISBN, hardcover: 979-8-951358-35-6
ISBN, paperback: 979-8-951358-34-9
ISBN, ebook: 979-8-951358-36-3
Cover design: Chris Treccani of 3 Dog Creative designed the cover.
Interior: The book is set in EB Garamond and printed in Alabama.