One of my favorite parts of researching a historical fiction is finding books that will be a perfect partner for my work-in-progress. Books that illuminate an era near to the one in my story or books that explore the same events from a different lens. I am always grateful when my publisher makes room in the back of the book to recommend these book partners. The author notes in LAST OF THE NAME point to several books by Zetta Elliot, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Walter Dean Myers.

Sometimes a book comes along too late to be included but is nevertheless a perfect companion read. Streetcar to Justice: how Elizabeth Jennings won the right to ride in New York, by Amy Hill Hearth came out last year. It is non-fiction, set in New York city a mere ten years before the setting of Last of the Name. And it illuminates a little known bit of history.

Nearly everyone knows Rosa Parks but did you know that more than 100 years before the Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, a woman named Elizabeth Jennings won the right in court for a black person to ride the public trolley in New York City. Hill’s well documented book is chock full of photographs which illuminate the condition of the streets of New York in the pre-Civil War era.

So many of the difficult racial, ethnic, and class issues we are facing today had their roots more than a hundred years ago. I hope both these books spark conversation and reflection on how we got to this moment, and inspire readers to move forward with ever greater understanding and compassion.