The American Queen
by Vanessa Miller
The end of the civil war did not change the environment of the south. The resentment of the loss of fortune by the slave owners, of work for the overseers, and the violence causes untenable situations. The young house slave, married to the oldest mixed race son of the master has no protections from these violent times. The struggle north, although dangerous, with night riders, animals, and violence is the only solution. They found a place for themselves, they shared all they earned as a group. The Happy Land was born. It was a communist like community, with a king and queen who managed to help their people. They were people who once lived but not included in the history books.

The American Queen was the first book I have read by Vanessa Miller. The story was so captivating. Based on a true story, it was an amazing historical fiction book.

The character development was good. Seeing how God worked in each of their lives. Redeeming their hurt and pain. Louella sure went through a lot of pain and suffering. It was heart breaking to follow her journey. Robert has many layers to him and takes a lot to understand.

The story line was fairly good, but at times I got lost where we were time jumped at times. I sometimes had to reread paragraphs because I missed that time had moved forward significantly.

The historical aspect was great. I loved learning that this was based on a true story. This was a hard story knowing that this is our history. I enjoy learning history, even if it is hard. When we learn from history we can grow. This story caused me to grow and learn. It has touched my heart and given me much to think about.

I loved Vanessa Miller’s intertwining of faith throughout Louella’s journey. I always appreciate when Christian Fiction points us back to our creator.


*I was given a copy of the book for personal review from the author. This is my person thoughts and reflections.

An excellent and powerfully important novel. Heart breaking yet beautiful storyline. The characters were intriguing and the story telling style resembles the work of some of the most talented historical fiction authors including Sadequa Johnson, Dolen Perkins Valdez, Yaa Gyasi, and Toni Morrison. The narration was well paced with good vocal quality and sentiment reflecting the population and subject matter.

𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞
This is a stunning book, wrenching at my heart. I admit I even cried at one point. But there are also many heartwarming and joyous moments as well.
This story is a beautiful retelling of Queen Louella, coming from slavery and building her kingdom on american soil. The story is based on real events and I really liked that the author explained at the end the differences from her work and historical events.
There were songs in the book and the narrator sang them that was a cool experience, in general the narrator had a mesmerising voice and her accent fit well with the premise.
This book was so emotional, inspirational and informative, I would recommend everyone to read this, especially to learn a part of American history that few know.
Long live Queen Louella in our hearts and minds!

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book going into it. I've never heard the story of the American Queen, and I was immediately interested to learn more after reading the synopsis.

It was a very interesting story and a very good read. The author tackled a hurtful, controversial topic like slavery with finesse, compassion, and a whole lot of heart.

Although the book was fiction, it felt very real to me. I think this is due, in large part, to the author's (seemingly, at least) extensive research on her topic. I also appreciated the notes at the end that outlined that parts that came directly from history and the parts where she took liberties with the story.

I loved the characters and found them to be very true to life. I also appreciated that the author worked in some tentative and budding kind relationships between white and black characters, as I imagine there were at least a few of those even in such controversial times.

I also found the attitudes and actions of some of the white people in the story to be very spot-on for how I believe they would have behaved at the time. i.e., Friendly to blacks when alone and part of the lynch mob when confronted by other whites.

Overall, I found this book to be very enjoyable, and it also sparked my interest enough that I plan to research more about "the American Queen."

As for the audio aspects of the book, I had no complaints. The Southern accents weren't overdone and irritating, and the audio was clear and well paced. Great job, narrator!

I read the novel in paperback format, so I knew the story and have reviewed it. The AudioBook performance was outstanding. The pacing and voice were wonderful. The narrator even sang. It was well-done.

Absolutely stunning and educational. It was great to hear of the one and only Black American Queen. I will definitely recommend this to people who love historical fiction.

This book is everything! Truly heartbreaking to reverential to hallelujah moments abound, in Vanessa Miller's THE AMERICAN QUEEN. The author had me at the first sentence...This book tells the horrors and abomination of slavery, the heartbreak of the attempt of trying to ruin a people, it catches in my throat..the stark and horrifying meanness of white slave owners..yet, Ms. Miller tells a tale of truth as well as a story based in truth about Queen Louella and her husband, King William, who left Mississippi to find a home for her people, a land they could own and build their homes on and have a place completely that they can call their own! What a book! I was and still am enthralled...after finishing it. I listened to the audio which was awesome. The narrator sang all the songs! This book needs to be read by every person alive. Thank you, Ms. Miller, for your incredible story which YOU brought to my life!

I love when a book helps me learn about a part of history that I wasn't aware of. The American Queen did just that. I couldn't help but admire Louella for her courage and desire to fight injustice.
I do wish the plot had been slightly more complex.
I really loved the audio narration and will look for other books by this narrator. She was exceptional!

Author Vanessa Miller has penned a brilliant novel and narrator Angel Pean brought it to life! I loved everything about this audiobook. Having already read the ebook I fell in love with the story. I loved it enough to want to hear the audiobook. I was not at all disappointed. The team of Vanessa Milker and Angel Pean are a match made in heaven. I highly recommend adding this audiobook to your collection!

“ For Sure and True”

The American Queen is an interesting look at what happened after slavery was abolished. Even though the slaves were “freed”, they had no where to go. They had no land, no money, and even though they were free, it was difficult for them and others to get out of the slavery mindset.
The plantations that were worked by the slaves were so damaged from the war, that even if the former slave owners were willing to pay them for their work, they couldn’t afford to do so.

Louella and her husband, William, decide to take a group of recently emancipated slaves on a journey from Mississippi to the North where they hope to find land for their community. Their community is based on a “One for all” ideology where everyone works for the betterment of the community and not themselves. We follow their journey from Mississippi to North Carolina/South Carolina border to a place they call “Happy land”.

We not only see the hardships that they face but we are also shown the victories such as being able to purchase land and grow their community.

I thought this was a very interesting book…I don’t know that I felt like this was really geared to adults and maybe would have been better to be categorized as juvenile or young adult. There were some portions of the book that were rushed through that I thought deserved more and other times that were unnecessarily drawn out. I did appreciate all of the research that the author put in to this book. I just felt like it really lacked substance and for some reason, I really had a problem with the fact that William and Louella were called “King and Queen”….I appreciate that they were the leaders of this group but I felt like using these titles to address them was a bit contrary to freedom. The people didn’t really have a voice in the community and having to go in front of the “King and Queen” to ask permission and talk about disputes in a formal setting seemed a bit medieval for me.

I did really enjoy the narration of the audiobook by Angel Pean and especially the fact that she sung some of the spirituals.

Thank you NetGalley and Thomas Nelson for the opportunity to review this book.

This book drew me in immediately. I found myself gasping, crying, and feeling what the main characters were feeling! Excellent read!!!

Loved it so much. I’ve never heard of the community of The Happy Land, or the King and Queen of it, not too far away from me in North and South Carolina. I wish it was more well known with how amazing and unique it and Louella Montgomery were.

The journey she and her people took after being freed from slavery, but still treated as such, was inspiring, as was the way she led her Kingdom, despite so many injustices - both with racism and violence, but also with others’ poor decisions.

I realize that it’s a fictionalized version and much is filled in, but it was well done. It was moving and I was fully invested, wanting to know what was going to happen next. While I would have liked a little more of how Louella grew as a character rather than just understanding that she did, I loved how she stood up against injustice, wrestled with God when she didn’t understand him, or dealt with loss and grief. I loved her character so much and what she did as the Queen of Happy Land for as long as she did is truly amazing. Highly recommend.

Thanks to Netgalley for and advanced copy of this audiobook. All opinions are mine.

This is one of those books that's going to stick with you long past the ending. "The American Queen" by Vanessa Miller is complimented completely by the excellent narration by Angel Pean and is the best audiobook I've listened to so far in 2024. I really enjoyed the rich, historical content of this historical fiction novel.

The narrator did a great job with the spoken parts and is a narrator I'd like to listen to again and again. The author did a great job incorporating African American spiritual songs into the book and the narrator brought those songs alive to the listener with appropriate emotion voiced. I liked how the well known spiritual songs reflected the emotions and lives of the main character Louella, who was the one singing them in the book.

This story was well researched and showed the many struggles, the rampant racism in the south, the passion, hopes and dreams of former Mississippi slaves Louella and William Montgomery and their people. They left Mississippi after the Civil War with several former slaves from their area heading somewhere north with a vision of a land where they and their people could prosper and be free. They picked up many along the way to their final destination which ended up being on the boarder of North and South Carolina. They ended up calling their settlement "The Happy Land" and thrived there for many years after the war.

This is based on true events, embellished by the author who did a great job at the end telling fact from fiction during her end of story epilogue. I had never heard of this American queen or the Happy Land so received quite the education on this little known facet of American history.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Thomas Nelson/Zondervan Audio for the chance to listen to the audiobook. This in no way influenced my review of this excellent book.

This is an amazing story. Absolutely beautiful and heart wrenching the entire way. I highly recommend it to everyone. The hardships endured are unimaginable but their determination is epically inspiring.

Thank you Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this amazing story.

The narrators voice is so beautiful 😍

The American Queen" fell short of my expectations.

Historical Fiction is one of my favorite genres to read.

The prose lacked something for me, with a tendency towards excessive background information that made the pacing sluggish.

The book is about slavery, nothing new can be offered on that subject. I think because it focused on well known facts it dragged on and on and on...

This is the fascinating true story of former slaves coming together as a collective to create a free community in North and South Carolina right after the Civil War. Many of these former slaves were sharecroppers for their former slave owners. However when the former owners reneged on their agreements and cheated them out of their wages and lands these people banded together and traveled to N/S Carolina and were able to purchase some amount of land for themselves as a group. Their motto was 'All for one, and one for all'. They pooled their resources and called their community 'The Kingdom of the Happy Land'. As a group they thrived under the leadership of their King and Queen, William and Louella Montgomery, both former slaves. They created a socialist type of society that actually worked quite well.

I loved this book, It is so well researched and full of so much interesting information regarding this period of history. It was difficult to read about the atrocities of slavery of course, but the author did her due diligence and told the unvarnished truth. I liked the snippets of hymns sung by the narrator during the telling of this audio book. This is excellent historical fiction. Highly recommended.

Thank you to Net Galley for the chance to listen/read an ARC version of this fascinating audio book.

I had the experience of listening to the audio version featuring the narration from Angel Pean, and I must say, she was the right choice. Pean delivered the story beautifully, and I hope to hear more work from her.

The American Queen by Vanessa Miller is inspired by the story of Louella Bobo Montgomery and her dream of being free in a place called "The Happy Land." And yes, this place is real.

After leaving the only home she knew, Louella, her husband, and 30 other free folks traveled to the Carolinas to establish a new beginning for themselves. Not only was this story a learning experience about the unfairness of the American Justice system, but it was also layered with the struggle for women's rights, equality, identity, poverty after the war, and other glaring issues throughout the story.

I wanted more depth to the story. More rawness. I understand the story was to enlighten us about a thriving black settlement during the 1860s and the "crowning" of the first black American King and Queen, but if you're going to talk about it, talk about it. There's no need to sugarcoat treatment we already know history glazes over.

This is an absolutely unforgettable historical fiction book about faith, perseverance, love, grief, and overcoming during the emancipation of slavery in the United States. The story mostly follows Louella, who was freed after the Civil War ended, but experienced extreme loss and trauma both before, during, and after the war. She struggles with her desire to see the goodness of God, and the conflicting evil that she’s experienced first-hand in the world. Her husband William is an amazing character who helps to lead her both spiritually and physically into a place where they can help others. Their strength and story is amazing, and the fact that it is based on true people of history make it even more incredible. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to read an encouraging book of faith, and a glimpse into a lesser known part of history that deserves more light.

I listened to the audiobook version and it was amazinggg. She even sang the hymns beautifully. This audiobook was a full experience. And I don’t say that lightly.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Thomas Nelson, and Zondervan Audio for the audio ARC in exchange for my honest review.

WOWZA! That is nowhere close to adequate to express how this book left me feeling. First let me give a disclaimer that I struggle at times reading books written about black history because, let's be honest, it was brutal. I also can struggle at times to read this type of book because of bitterness from the author who is writing it seeping on to the pages, and that can unwittingly take away from the impact of a book.

ALL OF THAT TO SAY....this is NOT one of those books! The author (and narrator!) did such an amazing job of telling this st0ry (that is based on a true story) and bringing the characters to life in a way that I mourned finishing the book. While I certainly wasn't a slave, Louella's spirit and resiliency struck such a deep chord with who I am as a person. I think it is fair to say I felt *seen* on a personal level through reading this book. I definitely want to live at Happy Land, the community Louella and her husband set up for freed slaves to live in and thrive together as a team.

Vanessa Miller does a masterful job of telling this story and weaving the love of God through the trials of humanity across centuries and millennia. While there is "nothing new under the sun", this book will impress upon you a fresh perspective of the plight of freed slaves, the fierce love of community, and the undying faithfulness of our God especially in the face of our own insufficiency.


I received an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.