These Heathens is a unique coming-of-age novel set in Civil Rights-era Atlanta

The narrator’s voice grabs hold immediately, and what a tale she has to tell! In small-town Georgia in 1960, Doris Steele, a Black seventeen-year-old, had dropped out of school two years ago to care for her family after her Ma got sick. She’s pregnant and can’t support a baby, but the local midwives who perform abortions know her parents, so she turns to her former teacher, Mrs. Lucas, for help.

Mrs. Lucas has a rich childhood friend in Atlanta who offers to arrange for the procedure, and what Doris sees there takes this Bible-raised teenager way out of her comfort zone.

At Mrs. Sylvia Broussard’s home, Doris hardly knows what to think. Mrs. Broussard wears pants and red lipstick and talks frankly about sex. She’s also an atheist. Mrs. Lucas appears to be a non-believer, too, which Doris can’t fathom; Doris knows she goes to church!

Speaking with honesty and cheeky humor – she crafts witty phrases she jots in a notebook – Doris is irresistibly appealing. She’s not wholly innocent, but not worldly either, and over the course of one whirlwind weekend, she socializes with Mrs. Broussard’s friends (including Coretta Scott King and her cousin Julia, a famous singer) and attends a student workshop on nonviolent activism.

With her medical appointment weighing on her mind, Doris gets introduced to a secret community of queer women, and although she’s not gay, she has many curious questions about how that all works. She also starts pondering her relationship with God, who created a more interesting world than she ever realized, and how much she owes to her upbringing versus her own desires.

With its well-crafted historical atmosphere that emphasizes Black women’s choices in the Civil Rights-era South and the importance of joyful spaces in a repressive world, this is a winning coming-of-age story full of personality and zing.

These Heathens was published by Random House in June, and I reviewed it for the Historical Novel Society.  I haven't heard much about this novel in the online historical fiction community and wanted to highlight it. It's very funny in places (something the genre doesn't see enough of), and the strong narrative voice carries you along.