Long After We Are Gone

by Terah Shelton Harris

That’s the thing about touch. You either forget it or remember it forever.

Are you still family if you don’t know each other anymore? Are you still family if you don’t know the whole story?

“The Department of Agriculture has recognized heir property as the leading cause of Black voluntary land loss. Heir property is estimated—and this is only an estimation because I truly believe it could be higher—to make up more than a third of Southern Black-owned land, roughly 3.5 million acres worth over twenty-eight billion dollars.”

The key to running away is knowing when you’ve been somewhere long enough.

“There’s an angel and a devil in every family and you don’t get to decide which one you are. It chooses you.”

“We are all broken in some way. Pieced back together anyway we can.”

Feelings don’t die. They wait. They stew and grow and surge back bigger, better, stronger than before. They demand to be felt.

A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR What inspired this novel? All of my books are inspired by real and unique circumstances that happen to real people and are not widely discussed. Long After We Are Gone is no exception. This book is inspired by the story of Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels of North Carolina, who went to jail for eight years after refusing to leave the land their great-grandfather purchased more than a century ago.