The Common Threads Trilogy

After Liz McDonald and Joseph Allen are married in the mid-1940s, things go terribly wrong on the family farm in Chatham, Ontario, and there is a great deal of sadness for everyone. Joe and Liz decide to move to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Joe has accepted a new job designing bridges and overpasses. In 1947, they are excited to begin a new life, especially as they are expecting their first child.

But Joe and Liz are unprepared for the outright hostility they face as a mixed-race couple. In this Ku Klux Klan country in the South, it's not acceptable for a black man and a white woman to be married, and the community holds this against them. A host of trouble follows Joe and Liz through the birth of their multi-racial twins and beyond.

Common Threads II, the second book in a three-book series, follows the lives of Joe and Liz who naively try to establish roots in a place where their interracial marriage is taboo. This novel narrates the couples' trials and tribulations and their experiences with racial cruelty and death.

"A tense tale with a complex portrayal of loss, life and love."

-Dr. Joseph Zadra