Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks' wildly original debut novel, Getting Mother's Body, follows pregnant, unmarried Billy Beede and her down-and-out family in 1960s Texas as they search for the storied jewels buried (or were they?) with Billy's fast-running, six-years-dead mother, Willa Mae.
Getting Mother's Body is a true spiritual successor to the work of writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker - but when it comes to bringing hard-luck characters to ingenious, uproarious life, Suzan-Lori Parks shares the stage with no one.