By the eve of the Civil War, there were four million slaves in North America, and Harrison County was the largest slave-owning county in Texas. So when China Galland returned to research her family history there, it should not have surprised her to learn of unmarked cemeteries for slaves. "My daddy never let anybody plow this end of the field," a local matron told a startled Galland during a visit to her antebellum mansion. "The slaves are buried there." Galland's subsequent effort to help restore just one of these cemeteries—Love Cemetery—unearths a quintessential American story of prejudice, land theft, and environmental destruction, uncovering racial wounds that are slow to heal.

Galland gathers an interracial group of local religious leaders and laypeople to work on restoring Love Cemetery, securing community access to it, and rededicating it to the memories of those buried there. In her attempt to help reconsecrate Love Cemetery, Galland unearths the ghosts of slavery that still haunt us today. Research into county historical records and interviews with local residents uncover two versions of history—one black, one white. Galland unpacks these tangled narratives to reveal a history of shame—of slavery and lynching, Jim Crow laws and land takings (the theft of land from African-Americans), and ongoing exploitation of the land surrounding the cemetery by oil and gas drilling. With dread she even discovers how her own ancestors benefited from the racial imbalance.

She also encounters some remarkable, inspiring characters in local history. Surprisingly, the original deed for the cemetery's land was granted not by a white plantation owner, but by Della Love Walker, the niece of the famous African-American cowboy Deadwood Dick. Through another member of the Love Cemetery committee, Galland discovers a connection to Marshall's native son,James L. Farmer, a founder of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Riders. In researching local history, Galland also learns of the Colored Farmers' Alliance, a statewide group formed in the 19th century that took up issues ranging from low wages paid to cotton pickers to emigration to Liberia.

By telling this one story of ultimate interracial and intergenerational cooperation, Galland provides a model of the kind of communal remembering and reconciliation that can begin to heal the deep racial scars of an entire nation.

Galland learned of an unmarked cemetery for slaves--Love Cemetery--in her Texas hometown. This is her struggle to help restore the cemetery that, in the process, uncovers racial wounds that have never completely healed.

Love Cemetery is the story of one woman trying to come to terms with racism--on both personal and public levels. When China Galland visited her childhood hometown in east Texas, she learned of an unmarked cemetery for slaves--Love Cemetery. Her ensuing quest to reclaim the ground, to mark it, unearths racial wounds that have never completely healed.

Research into county historical records and interviews with local residents in Harrison County--at one time the largest slave-owning county in Texas--led Galland to the discovery of Love Cemetery, an African-American communal burial ground that the local community had been locked out of for forty years. Research became activism as she helped organize a grassroots, interracial committee, made up of local religious leaders and lay people, to work on restoring community access to Love.

Metaphorically, Love Cemetery is only one example of a much larger body of unearthed history. The author presents material that reaches back to the time of slavery and post-civil war Reconstruction, of lynchings and landtakings (the theft of land from African Americans). Love Cemetery shines a light on the national legacy and shame of slavery through an inspiring story of one community's reconciliation in their united effort to mark a piece of American history. The history of Love Cemetery is the history of slavery in the United States--a history that touches us all-black or white. The message of Love Cemetery is ultimately one of tremendous hope as members of both black and white communities come together to right an historical worng, and in so doing, discover each other's common dignity.

Sue Monk Kidd praises Love Cemetery:

Racial injusticecontinues to be a wound in American life that calls out for particular and concrete narratives of healing. This book is just such a narrative, but an especially evocative one. Galland captures the strugle to reclaim one small cemetery in Texas with such engrossing drama and personal detail that the story becomes something larger still--a universal struggle to reclaim the ground of Deep Compassion that lies untended in the human heart. I love Galland's raging empathy for those who are disenfranchised and suffer injustice.

Born and raised in Texas, China Galland is the award-winning author of Longing for Darkness and The Bond Between Women. She received a Hedgebrook Writers Invitational Residency and has won awards for her writing from the California Arts Council. Galland is a professor in residence at the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where she directs the Keepers of Love Project. She lectures, teaches, and leads retreats nationally and internationally on religion, race, and reconciliation.