Historical fiction is a great way to make history come alive. In celebration of Black History Month, here are some historical fiction novels for teens and adults that focus on Black characters at different moments in American history.
Historical Fiction for Tweens & Teens
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Chains
by Laurie Halse Anderson When their owner dies at the start of the Revolution, Isabel and her younger sister are sold to Loyalists in New York, where Isabel is offered the chance to spy for the Patriots. |
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Under a painted sky
by Stacey Lee In 1845, Sammy, a Chinese American girl, and Annamae, an African American slave girl, disguise themselves as boys and travel on the Oregon Trail to California from Missouri. |
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A sitting in St. James
by Rita Williams-Garcia The three-time National Book Award finalist and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author of One Crazy Summer follows a woman’s reflections on the intertwined lives of masters and slaves throughout 60 years on an antebellum American plantation. |
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So many beginnings : a Little Women remix
by Bethany C. Morrow In this powerful retelling of the classic novel, four young Black sisters, coming of age during the American Civil War, face first love, health issues, heartbreak and new horizons. |
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Saving Savannah
by Tonya Bolden Savannah Riddle feels suffocated by her life as the daughter of an upper class African American family in Washington, D.C., until she meets a working-class girl named Nella who introduces her to the suffragette and socialist movements and to her politically active cousin Lloyd. |
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Angel of Greenwood
by Randi Pink Though they've attended the same schools, Isaiah never noticed Angel as anything but a dorky, Bible toting church girl. Then their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library, a three-wheel, two-seater bike. Angel can't turn down the money and Isaiah is soon eager to be in such close quarters with Angel every afternoon. But life changes on May 31, 1921 when a vicious white mob storms the community of Greenwood, leaving the town destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Only then, Isaiah, Angel, and their peers realize who their real enemies are. |
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Ophie's ghosts
by Justina Ireland Discovering her ability to see ghosts when a cruel act ends her father’s life and forces her to move in with relatives in 1920s Pittsburgh, young Ophelia forges a helpful bond with a spirit whose own life ended suddenly and unjustly. |
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No crystal stair : a documentary novel of the life and work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem bookseller
by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson A fictionalized biography of the bookseller and civil rights activist who owned the African National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem, New York City. |
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Flygirl
by Sherri L. Smith Dreaming of being a pilot her whole life, Ida Mae Jones sees her chance during World War II, but she cannot be accepted into the WASP because she is black, forcing Ida Mae to choose between her racial heritage and chasing her dream. |
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Lies we tell ourselves
by Robin Talley In 1959 Virginia, Sarah, a black student who is one of the first to attend a newly integrated school, forces Linda, a white integration opponent's daughter, to confront harsh truths when they work together on a school project. |
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The awakening of Malcolm X
by Ilyasah Shabazz A fictionalized account of Malcolm X’s adolescent years in prison, written by his daughter and a Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Award-winning author, depicts Malcolm Little’s struggles with race, politics, religion and justice before his emergence as a civil rights leader. |
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All the days past, all the days to come
by Mildred D Taylor A long-awaited conclusion to the story that began in the Newbery Medal-winning Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry finds young adult Cassie Logan searching for a sense of belonging before joining the Civil Rights Movement in 1960s Mississippi. |
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Girls like us
by Randi Pink In the summer of 1972, three girls from very different backgrounds struggle to come to terms with being pregnant. |
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The black kids
by Christina Hammonds Reed Enjoying the luxuries of a privileged life in 1992 Los Angeles, a black high school senior is unexpectedly swept up in the vortex of the Rodney King Riots while her closest friends spread a rumor that could derail a fellow black student’s future. |
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Black was the ink
by Michelle Coles Despondent sixteen-year-old Malcolm finds new strength and courage as he is transported between his family's modern-day Mississippi farm and the life of his ancestor Cedric Johnson, a congressional aide in post-Civil War America. |
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Yesterday is history
by Kosoko Jackson Traveling back and forth in time after a life-saving surgery, Andre bonds with one boy from the 1960s and another from present-day Boston before confronting a difficult choice. |
Historical Fiction for Adults
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The water dancer
by Ta-Nehisi Coates A Virginia slave narrowly escapes a drowning death through the intervention of a mysterious force that compels his escape and personal underground war against slavery. By the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me. |
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Conjure women
by Afia Atakora A midwife and conjurer of curses reflects on her life before and after the Civil War, her relationships with the families she serves and the secrets she has learned about a plantation owner’s daughter. |
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The prophets
by Robert Jones Two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation find refuge in each other while transforming a quiet shed into a haven for their fellow slaves, before an enslaved preacher declares their bond sinful. |
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The sweetness of water
by Nathan Harris In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox. |
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Libertie
by Kaitlyn Greenidge Coming of age as a free-born Black woman in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson struggles against her mother’s medical aspirations for her when she finds herself more drawn to a musical career that could compromise her autonomy. |
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The gilded years
by Karin Tanabe A late 19th-century woman risks everything to earn a college degree from Vassar while hiding her African-American descent, a situation that is complicated by her romance with a fair-skinned roommate's brother. By the author of The Price of Inheritance. |
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Wild women and the blues
by Denny S. Bryce In an award-winning debut novel, a sharecropper’s daughter navigates celebrity encounters, bootlegging and gangster activities in Jazz Age Chicago before sharing her story with a grieving film student nearly a century later. |
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The revisioners : a novel
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now, her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine's family. Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine's descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays her grandchild to be her companion. But Martha's behavior soon becomes erratic, then even threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine's converge. |
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Mudbound : a novel
by Hillary Jordan In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm--a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not--charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion. |
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The nickel boys
by Colson Whitehead A follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning, The Underground Railroad, follows the harrowing experiences of two African-American teens at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. |
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Deacon King Kong : a novel
by James McBride In the aftermath of a 1969 Brooklyn church deacon’s public shooting of a local drug dealer, the community’s African-American and Latinx witnesses find unexpected support from each other when they are targeted by violent mobsters. |
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The vanishing half
by Brit Bennett Separated by their embrace of different racial identities, two mixed-race identical twins reevaluate their choices as one raises a black daughter in their southern hometown while the other passes for white with a husband who is unaware of her heritage. |
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The Turner house
by Angela Flournoy Learning that after a half-century of family life that their house on Detroit's East Side is worth only a fraction of its mortgage, the members of the Turner family gather to reckon with their pasts and decide the house's fate. |
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Red at the bone
by Jacqueline Woodson As Melody celebrates a coming of age ceremony at her grandparents’ house in 2001 Brooklyn, her family remembers 1985, when Melody’s own mother prepared for a similar party that never took place in this novel about different social classes. |