Here in this exclusive Black Expressions Rediscoveries edition, are three celebrated novels by Alice Walker: The Third life of Grange Copeland, Meridian, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The color Purple.

The Third Life of Grange Copland (1970) chronicles the psychological enslavement spanning three generations in the family of tenant farmer Grange Copeland. Worn down by the hopelessness of his miserable existence in the South, Grange sets out for a better life int he North, only to be met with comparable oppression there. When he finally returns to Georgia years later, Grange finds his family irrevocably altered, and faces a new opportunity to change his lot in life.

Meridian (1976) tells the story of Meridian Hill, a passionate young black woman dedicated to establishing racial and social equality-without resorting to the more radical methods of some of her contemporaries in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Finding fulfillment in a campaign to register African-American voters, she remains committed to improving conditions for blacks in the deep South long after material comforts have seduced her coworkers away.

The Color Purple (1982), which secured Walker's literary reputation, is an epistolary novel set primarily in Georgia from the 1920s through the 1940s. It recounts the devastating blows dealt Celie, bitterly abused her whole life, who, over the course of a thirty-year correspondence with God and her lost sister Nettie, ultimately prevails over her cruel husband and brutal circumstances to emerge victorious. --front flap