This is the story of a Black mother and daughter that alternates between 1960’s and 1990’s during their early 20’s. Alyhough Friedas daughter Tulip thought her and her mother were so different, their lives contained so many similarities. The author did an amazing job capturing true events that occurred during those times and how each character handled their internal fight of wanting to stand up for change AND not getting involved to honor their loved ones wishes.

This is very much a story that centers around racial injustices and the brutal attacks and murders that occurred to people of color.

Emotions of sadness, anger, love, frustration, strength, and determination were just a few I felt when listening to this story. Thought provoking and gut wrenching, but yet so very inspiring!

Thank you NetGalley and Harper Audio for the advanced listeners copy!

Freda Gilroy comes from Chicago in 1959 to attend Fisk University, which is her parents' alma mater. She finds the Jim Crow South to be quite different from the privileged life she has led as a doctor's daughter. She gets involved in the Civil Rights Movement with a charming young musician while dating a medical student at nearby Meharry Medical College.

In 1992 Freda's daughter Tulip was working in a PR firm of mostly white people where she has been trying to get a promotion for five years. After the Rodney King trial ruling, Tulip felt led to get involved with the protests for the community.

The novel has some very important historical significance that I am thankful to learn more about. Bahni Turpin did a fantastic job of narrating the audiobook.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Audio for the advanced digital copy of the audiobook.

Thank you, Netgalley and William Morrow/Harper Collins, for this Advanced Listener's Copy.
I had to sit with this for a few days, because it is glaringly obvious how similar the parallels of the Sixties and today's political and social climate is. I was struggling with how to review while knowing my place as a white woman. This is, in my humble opinion, a very important piece of fiction rooted in and derived from a very important time in our history. And you know what they say about history being bound to repeat itself.

"Racism, she was learning, came for all of them. Even an entertainer larger than life like Nat King Cole, a man beloved around the world, a performer they couldn't get enough of. Bigots had to knock a man like Nat to the floor because they didn't know what else to do with someone who hypnotized people with his talent."

"People of Means" provides a fictional take on the events surrounding The Civil Rights Movement, following a mother, Freda, and her daughter, Tulip, that, even in dual timelines, experience the same call to injustice. Freda has privilege imposed upon her by her parents, implored to not get involved in protests and fights for equality. This same imposition is imposed onto Tulip by her mother some-30 years later when Rodney King's murder incites a need for justice in the 90's.
While "People of Means" can be considered fiction, the storylines of both Freda and Tulip can be found mirrored in many real life experiences of those who have and continue to fight for racial inequality in the United States. It bears repeating: it is a very important piece of fiction. I learned something, I was captivated - so much so that the scope in which what I had originally learned about The Civil Rights Movement has now expanded tenfold. The weaving of Freda's life story, with her taking part in the movement alongside the most honorable John Lewis and mentioning the impact of Emmett Till's death make the story that much more real, because that is what it is. Real.

"It's odd how you could know something to be true in your spirit before any confirmed it for you."

Nancy Johnson has crafted something truly incredible here. Grief, history, love, loss and support are all key themes in this story. I thank the author and the publishers for allowing me to experience this story before its release. I implore anybody and everybody to read or listen to this story. You may learn something, as well.

"We all have the capacity to be people of means, the question is what we do with those means."

Thank you HarperAudio Adult and NetGalley for the ALC!

This book is told in dual timelines. It follows Freda in the 1960s and her daughter, Tulip, in the 1990s. Both mother and daughter find themselves dealing with similar challenges, and we see them decide if they are willing to join the fight for justice and equality.

There are so many important themes throughout this book that make you reflect on yourself and the world. Unfortunately, we still see so many of the same racial injustices today.

I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it! The narrator was also great if you decide to go with the audiobook.

People of Means, by Nancy Johnson, narrated by Nancy Johnson (the author) and Bahni Turpin is an amazing historical fiction novel running along two timelines: the Civil Rights Movement and post-Rodney King America. The book seamlessly aligns the themes experienced in these parallel timelines including how educated minority women must work harder to be recognized for the same achievements as their male and non-minority counterparts. In addition, it reveals how the more affluent minorities still experience the same racism and microaggressions as their less affluent counterparts.

The narrators Nancy Johnson (the author), and Bahni Turpin bring the characters to life and narration style makes it easily to identify which characters are speaking due to each characters unique voice. If you enjoyed Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson this is also a book for you.

Thank you to HarperAudio Adult | HarperAudio and NegGalley for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook.

This book was fabulous. I feel it falls into historical fiction along with the categories given. The author has such o amazing characters. She reminded me of the 60s when I was in a white privileged life and sheltered from what was going on until JFK and Martin Luther King Jr were assassinated. The family issues of keeping proper behavior for our family reputation were the same in the white but not the issues of the racial prejudices and inequality. This book is one l will recommend to my church book club..

The story flowed well and the characters were well developed. I recommend this book and look forward to more from this author.


****Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review****

4.25 stars--People of Means is a novel that weaves between a mother and daughter's formative experiences around anti-racist activism. The mother is coming of age at Fisk University in Tennessee, where she gets wrapped into the civil rights movement and a love triangle. The daughter is working at a PR firm in LA during the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict and gets involved with protesters. Both of these women have conflicts with their parents, who see social activism as a lower class activity and engage in class bias as the title suggests.

Their stories are emotional and interesting and I haven't read a book that looked at the movements in this specific lense, so I learned a lot from that. The last portion of the book is hard to read at times, it describes the realities of heinous racist violence, but I think it is written as sensitively as it could be and the overall book's impact is worth it.

The reason the score isn't higher is that it was pretty clear what was going to happen in the parents' arc the entire time. The foreshadowing either could have been lighter or we could have been explicit about it the whole time, but this felt like we were having things hinted in a super obvious way, which didn't work perfectly for me.

Misc note--I saw this listed as a young adult novel in a couple of places and it seems like a normal adult/general fiction etc. novel to me.

Thank you to Harper Collins Audio for the advance review copy of this audiobook.

I loved People of Means. I’m so grateful to HarperAudio for an ALC (@harpercollins)!

This is a dual timeline book about a mother and daughter separated by 30 years, but still dealing with the profound effects of racism in America. Freda Gilroy arrives at Fisk University in Nashville in 1959 and gets wrapped up in the start of the Civil Rights Movement. She knows her family wants a different life for her, and she’s hesitant to jump in with both feet, but despite what she promises them, she can’t stand by and watch the injustices happening around her. In 1992 Chicago, her daughter Tulip also feels called to action after the ruling in the Rodney King trial and feels the same resistance from her family about getting involved.

In the book Freda is torn between two men, a soon-to-be doctor who has her parents stamp of approval and a civil rights activist. It was interesting knowing Freda’s choice from the other timeline and wondering how she got there. But the most striking thing about the two timelines is how much stays the same. I think I would have had a slightly different experience reading this book before last November. I still would have been struck by the lack of progress, but I was hopeful that as a country we were moving forward—probably still too slowly, but at least in the right direction. Reading this in the first few weeks of this new administration was heartbreaking. To see how hard people fought for rights, and to imagine having to do that all over again is unthinkable. This book was a sharp reminder that we should be better than this.

Bahni Turpin narrates the audiobook, so you know it’s a fabulous listen. She did an amazing job with both characters. I would one hundred percent recommend the audiobook, but however you read People of Means, it’s a book that will stick with you.

Thank you to William Morrow for my gifted copy, and thank you to Harper Audio Adult for my ALC!

A while ago, I saw a post about an interaction between a Black grandmother and a Black grandchild. The specifics are foggy, but the grandchild was going out to protest, and the grandmother was giving them tips on how to stay safe. The ultimate message that has stuck with me to this day was that fifty years ago, the grandmother was protesting for civil rights, and fifty years later, her grandchild was protesting for the same thing. There isn’t review appropriate language to describe how unjust that is.

People Of Means is told 30 years apart. It takes place in the 1960s, during the civil rights movement, and the early 1990s, post Rodney King. Of course I grew up hearing about Rodney King, but in 1991, I was barely 3. I didn’t see the video. I didn’t watch the trial. I learned about him from music and pop culture. But I never saw the video until watching the OJ Simpson documentary on Netflix. Last week. It altered my brain and heart the same way seeing Eric Garner killed did. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Jacob Blake.

Reading this book from the perspective of a young adult in the early 90s severely shifted and warped how I viewed my life in the 90s. Severely sheltered and privileged. It humbled me. Especially experiencing Tulip discovering that her parents are also people. Don’t we all go through that at some age? When Mom and Dad’s personhood starts showing through their role as caretakers. That coming of age was beautiful to witness. Two stories of fighting to be seen, for equity and equality, coming together, 30 years apart.

Nancy Johnson is special. She has that something that pulls you in and makes it easy to connect and empathize with people whose shoes you’ve never walked in. It is my favorite thing about her writing.

4.5 Stars

I truly admire Nancy’s ability to weave together two distinct storylines and timelines while keeping me completely engaged. In her latest release, she masterfully connects a mother and daughter’s journeys during two pivotal social movements—the Civil Rights Movement and the post-Rodney King verdict era.

In 1959, Freda is on her way to Fisk University, an HBCU in Nashville, to uphold her family’s legacy of Black excellence. However, instead of focusing on finding a husband, as her parents expect, she finds herself torn between two vastly different love interests: one, a determined future doctor, and the other, a man exhausted by systemic oppression and ready to fight back. Meanwhile, in 1992, Freda’s daughter Tulip is a rising PR professional in Chicago, repeatedly hitting the glass ceiling due to workplace microaggressions and racism. When the officers who brutalized Rodney King are acquitted, Tulip is outraged—not just by the verdict itself but by how the media and her colleagues vilify Black communities’ response.

Both Freda and Tulip experience moments of radicalization, forcing them to navigate friendships, love, and professional spaces as Black women in vastly different yet eerily parallel worlds.

What I loved most about this novel was its nuanced exploration of intersectionality in Black women’s lives. Each protagonist grapples with the overlapping challenges of race, gender, and class while simultaneously finding her voice. I also appreciated the historical nods that anchored their stories—the mention of Meharry Medical College, a cornerstone of Black medical education, and the tragic, unjust killing of Latasha Harlins. My only wish was for more direct interaction between Freda and Tulip; deeper conversations between them would have tied their narratives together even more powerfully.

"People of Means by Nancy Johnson is a captivating story set in two different eras of time that still rings very true today.

What a powerful and gripping read that captures dual moments in US history. I loved the plotting, the character development, the cultural insights and the emotional depth of the story. The dual settings and timelines really brought the story to life.

I paired the audio and print versions of this book and really enjoyed this immersive reading experience.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.