Sugar Land is a southern fried novel about love, Lead Belly, and liberation. According to a starred Kirkus Review, Sugar Land "is a postcard of small-town Texas life from Prohibition through civil rights, tracing the treatment and awareness of gay people through these decades. The love child of Fannie Flagg and Rita Mae Brown... (a) ravishing debut."
It's 1923 in Midland, Texas, and Miss Dara falls in love with her best friend - who also happens to be a girl. Terrified, Miss Dara takes a job at the Imperial State Prison Farm for men. Once there, she befriends inmate and soon-to-be legendary blues singer Lead Belly, who sings his way out (true story) - but only after he makes her promise to free herself from her own prison. Sugar Land is a triumphant, beautiful novel about the heart's refusal to be denied what the heart wants.