The Purple Heights

In the small mill town of Riverton, South Carolina, young Peter Champneys presses wildflowers between his mother's old books and dreams of a past his family never speaks of. The Champneys name once meant something in these parts, but now Peter and his mother live in humble circumstances, sustained by each other and by the Black community that raised him. Emma Campbell, a colored woman of remarkable strength and tenderness, looms large in his young life, a second mother, a storyteller, the steady heartbeat of his world. Through Peter's eyes, we experience the raw sensory texture of early twentieth-century Southern childhood: the summer heat, the cicadas, the cat he names Martin Luther (a mischievous, love-hate companion through endless afternoons), and the transformative power of drawing, a talent his mother quietly nurtures. The novel traces Peter's early years with an unflinching yet tender attention to the small dramas of growing up without a father, the weight of fallen family prestige, and the quiet ambitions that flicker in a boy's heart. This is a story about the making of a self, how poverty and memory, love and loss, combine to shape the person a child will become.