Gail Lukasik

Darkness Surrounds Us

White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing is the story of Gail Lukasik’s mother’s “passing,” Gail’s struggle with the shame of her mother’s choice, and her subsequent journey of self-discovery and redemption. In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother’s decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother’s fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother’s racial lineage, tracing her family back to eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage. With a foreword written by Kenyatta Berry, host of PBS's Genealogy Roadshow, this unique and fascinating story of coming to terms with oneself breaks down barriers.

My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing

White Like Her

“An early-autumn treat fit for late-night devouring.” —Publishers Weekly “A taut gothic mystery with an intriguing twist.” —Susanna Calkins, award-winning author of the Lucy Campion Mysteries and the Speakeasy Murders A Ghostly Window Into the Past Nurse Nellie Lester can’t escape death. Fleeing Chicago at the height of the 1918 Spanish flu, she takes a nursing job at a decrepit mansion on a desolate Michigan island. She’s convinced the island holds the secret to her mother’s murky past. The only problem? Her dead mother seems to have followed her there. Nightly she’s haunted by a ghostly presence that appears in her bedroom. But is it her mother or something more sinister? When the frozen body of the prior nurse is unearthed, Nellie suspects her family’s history and the nurse’s uncanny death are connected to a mysterious group that disappeared from the island twenty-four years earlier. As winter closes in, past and present collide resurrecting a lurid killer, hell-bent on keeping the island’s secrets. Will Nellie uncover her mother’s shocking past before the killer enacts his final revenge? “Lukasik blends all the elements needed for a dark suspense novel: a forbidding mansion, ghostly presences, secret passages, a hostile housekeeper, a temperamental employer, and residents unwilling to talk to outsiders. For fans of Rebecca, The Woman in White, and The Death of Mrs. Westaway.” —Library Journal

The Darkness Surrounds Us

Chicago performance artist Rose Caffrey is desperate to sell her sister's nineteenth-century farmhouse. She's haunted by her sister's death from a fall inside the house. But when Rose discovers three murals in an upstairs bedroom depicting strange images of Native Americans and bizarre nineteenth-century landscapes, she becomes obsessed with knowing the artist's identity and the meaning of the murals. Buried for over one hundred and seventy-five years under wallpaper and paint, the murals hint at secrets tied to the old house, the artist, and the nearby 1836 Trail of Tears Camp Ground Cemetery. Only one mural remains to be uncovered. And Rose is convinced the hidden mural holds the key to deciphering the other three.What the last mural reveals launches Rose and art restorer, Alex Hague, on a quest for one of the greatest lost art treasures of sixteenth century America. What Rose never expects to find are crimes going back over four hundred years with the potential to transform American history -- if she can escape the fate of the other lost artists before her.

Gail Lukasik

About

Books

Join the club