Kalamazoo Public Library is excited to welcome Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of the 2026 Reading Together title Take My Hand, to Kalamazoo! Join us at Chenery Auditorium for a moderated conversation with the author, followed by an audience Q&A session and book signing opportunity.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench (2010), Balm (2015), Take My Hand (2022), and most recently Happy Land (2025). Take My Hand was named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Essence, NBC News, and elsewhere. The novel was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award and named a Top 20 Book of the Year by the Editors at Amazon. It was awarded the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Fiction and the 2023 BCALA Award for Fiction. The audiobook version of Take My Hand was named a Best of 2022 by Audible. Happy Land appeared on many “Most Anticipated” lists for 2025, including People, Elle, Reader’s Digest, Woman’s World, and elsewhere.

Copies of Take My Hand are available for checkout at all Kalamazoo Public Library branches and online at kpl.gov.

About the novel: “Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a profoundly moving novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench. Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, she’s shocked to learn that her new patients, India and Erica, are children—just eleven and thirteen years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. Until one day she arrives at the door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them. Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace, and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten. That must not be forgotten. Because history repeats what we don’t remember.”