The Cherokee Rose

“Tiya Miles tackles such a sensitive and complex topic with incredible wisdom, grace, honesty, and research. The Cherokee Rose is a fascinating exploration and enchanting examination of often hidden or misunderstood histories. It's so real and yet so magical; an extraordinary journey.”

--Robert Jones, Jr., author of the New York Times bestselling novel, The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction

“Untold history blossoms vibrantly to life in Tiya Miles’s The Cherokee Rose. A triumphant arrangement -- part ghost story, part historical mystery told with modern flair. A fascinating group of contemporary women are compelled by the forces of folklore to discover their interwoven ancestry. Miles seamlessly layers robust fact with immersive fiction in a revelatory investigation of Cherokee and Black American identity -- a tale of division, unity, and awe-inspiring cultural resilience.”

--Afia Atakora, author of Conjure Women

“A timely, necessary tale that will transport readers to a time that should never be forgotten, but is rarely explored with such a close eye. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, this is a novel for history devotees as well as those with an appreciation for the enduring nature of the human spirit. Lovely.”

--Asha Lemmie, New York Times bestselling author of Fifty Words for Rain

"Dr. Tiya Miles's fiction contains, perhaps, just as much truth about our forgotten histories as her nonfiction. Her imagination--rendered with intricate and beautiful sentences and clear yet expected indications of her meticulous research--enables our moral imagination to grow. We need this."

--Caleb Gayle, author of We Refuse to Forget

“Poignant and essential storytelling. That only begins to describe Tiya Miles’s work. The Cherokee Rose is a book that, with a deft hand, illuminates a little-known, yet vitally important, facet of a past we all share. A wonderful read.”

--Jason Mott, National Book Award-winning author of Hell of a Book

“The history of the American slave-owning South is a history of erasures. With this novel, Tiya Miles overwrites the whitewashing, vibrantly imagining a complex and nuanced community within the Cherokee Nation where the lives of African Americans and Native Americans are interwoven in surprising and forgotten ways. But this is far more than historical fiction; it is a provocative and charming exploration of how one twenty-first century original, Cheyenne, reframes the past by the creation of a home meant to be shared.”

--Alice Randall, author of The Wind Done Gone

“The Cherokee Rose is a great story, a skillfully woven mystery about the way history unfolds in individual lives. It neglects neither the Indian nor African American side of the story. The novel’s characters, beautifully intertwined, teach us that disenfranchising community members always means a loss of our own selves, an erosion of the very things that make us tribal.”

--Craig Womack, author of Drowning in Fire

“In The Cherokee Rose, the award-winning and distinguished historian Tiya Miles demonstrates her equally impressive talents as a novelist. Peopled with richly conceived characters, driven by compelling human dramas that cross cultures and ages, and enlivened by graceful and evocative prose, this debut novel is an intimate study of the tangled histories and contemporary legacies of slave-holding in Indian country. The Cherokee Rose asks hard questions about race, power, and belonging and reminds us of the fierce love that centers the quest for justice. We need more novels like this.”

--Daniel Heath Justice, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture, University of British Columbia