New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. dj. Hardcover first edition - The autobiography of a remarkable woman, as well as the story of three generations of an African-American family. "The seventh of eight children, Freddie Mae Baxter was born in 1923 in rural South Carolina. When her father left the family, her mother had to raise the children alone, and Freddie Mae went to work - first picking cotton, then cooking for the white families in town. At seventeen, she decided to go up North in search of new horizons and a better life." In Harlem she played saxophone in an all-girls' band - and through good times and bad, she remained optimistic. Frontispiece. 223 pp. ISBN: 0-375406204.