Freshwater Road is the story of one young woman?s journey into adulthood via the political and social upheavals of the civil rights movement. A young black collegian, Celeste Tyree, leaves Ann Arbor to go to Pineyville, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964 to help found a Freedom School and a voter registration project as part of Freedom Summer. As the summer unfolds, she confronts not only the political realities of race and poverty in this tiny town, but also truths about herself and her own family.

As Celeste gets to know her fellow activists and the people of Pineyville, she grapples with her father?s disapproval of her decision to go to Mississippi. A numbers-running bar owner in Detroit, Shuck Tyree is proud of his daughter and proud of the opportunities he?s provided for her: Celeste risking what he?s offered by going to the violent South is not what he had planned. Long estranged from her mother, Celeste is rocked by revelations of wrenching details of her past. At the same time, she develops a deep relationship with the woman hosting her in Mississippi, Geneva Owens, who helps Celeste learn more about what it means to be an adult woman and a "person of substance" in the world.

"In her rich, absorbing debut, actress Nicholas (Room 222; In the Heat of the Night) follows a young woman South to 'trench Mississippi, gutbucket Mississippi' during the summer of 1964. The daughter of a Detroit bar owner/numbers runner and his estranged, class-conscious ex-wife (whose light complexion enables her to pass as white), Celeste Tyree has enjoyed a comfortable, sheltered middle-class life for all of her nearly two decades. But when activists talking of nonviolent revolution visit her Ann Arbor college campus, she determines to go South to help register blacks to vote. It's a decision she shares with her stern father, Shuck, in a 'By the time you read this' letter, and Shuck's self-identification as a race man wars with his concern for his daughter. Part of what drives wide-eyed Northerner Celeste is her sense that her life little matches common black experience; her work in Mississippi is an attempt to validate her identity as a black woman as much as it is a journey to help lift the veil of oppression. Nicholas tests her protagonist's mettle in multiple ways, and Celeste finds previously untapped reserves of strength, learning lessons about activism and secrets about her own family. Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes terrifying, this novel marks the debut of a talented writer. Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Nicholas brings alive the texture and emotion of the civil rights movement during the perilous adventure that was Freedom Summer." Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander

Celeste Tyree, a young black collegian, leaves Michigan for Mississippi in the summer of 1964 to help found a Freedom School and a voter registration project. As Freedom Summer unfolds, Celeste confronts not only the political realities of race and poverty in this tiny town, but also truths about herself and her own family.

Denise Nicholas is an actor who starred in the TV series Room 222 and In the Heat of the Night, among many other TV, film, and theatrical productions. Freshwater Road is her first novel. Before her career as a TV star, Denise Nicholas worked with the Free Southern Theater in Mississippi in 1964, and in Freshwater Road she reaches back to bring that summer alive in this unforgettable first novel. Freshwater Road will prove to be one of the best and most important novels ever written about the civil rights movement in America.