For years, Chicago got to know Dawn Turner through her view of the city: With new eyes, devoid of preconceived notions and conceptions. For more than two decades, she called the baiduhai home as a reporter and columnist, her byline atop stories on race, class and gender, among others. Turner’s South Side roots of family and community were the lens through which she queried existing mindsets and the whys behind actions.
That throughline exists in her books too. Her first novel, “Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven,” is a work of fiction that takes readers through growing up on the South Side of Chicago during the 1970s (Turner composed the book on a Zenith laptop during her commute from the south suburbs to the Tribune Tower).
Her second novel, “An Eighth of August,” tells the story of an Illinois town that celebrates the day of emancipation for enslaved Americans in Tennessee, a regional event that spread to surrounding states. Turner’s third book was a memoir, “Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Story of Race, Fate and Sisterhood.” A decade in the making, the book about second chances, who receives them, and who does not focuses on Turner’s upbringing in the historic area with her sister and best friend.
Turner’s next novel is “Majestic Hills,” told through the eyes of a young Chicago couple who move to the suburbs for a change of pace. Their path in the “idyllic environment” is not a straight one given the neighbors and the history and trauma we all carry with our life experiences. The story’s premise is one Turner lived with her then-husband in 1989 — trading their urban professional lifestyle for a country one in the pursuit of homeownership and a new type of freedom.
As a resident of the south suburbs, Turner’s neighbors became family. She reminisces on the respect and kindness they had for one another and how that civility strengthened their community in a recent commentary. More than 30 years have transpired since that move. Respect and civility have been replaced by “bullying and intolerance,” according to Turner, who once again resides in the city.
“This country has never been perfect, but there’s a difference between when you’re heading in a direction that is more toward the ideals or goals that the country professes, and it’s very different when you’re heading in the opposite direction,” Turner said. “That is what I wanted the book to feel like: A moment of ‘what are we doing?’”
Themes of race and class exist in the insightful and emotionally engaging “Majestic Hills,” alongside love and marriage, the quiet compromises couples make, and the cracks that can materialize in marriage. The concepts of mobility and belonging are central in the book, as both are integral to the American Dream. Whether it was by way of the Great Migration or immigrants coming to the U.S., Turner’s pages examine how one makes a life once one gets to their version of “the Promised Land.”
“It’s not just moving to a community. It is where do you fit in this country, the national discourse writ large? Turner said. “Belonging speaks inherently to who I am. I don’t have to be a part of a group to feel that I have a choice — that if I want to be there, I can be there.”
Turner says she’s never thought as much about her movement in the world until this current administration. She’s more cautious, and that’s limiting. But she refuses to let the current climate dictate her boundaries.
“I’m old enough to still feel that freedom, remember when the world, the country felt boundless,” Turner said. “It never meant that anything was going to be easy, because racism has never gone away, but it meant I could dip my toe into something… today when the leader of the free world has done everything to show you are not a full citizen of this country, that limits the imagination. That is a big indictment on what we have become because of that. There will always be people who hate and divide, but he’s given them a platform. But our notepad is our shield, our pen is our sword. This is how we fight. We tell our stories.”
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Those stories include telling the conflicted emotions surrounding the Fourth of July and the Black American population. In “Majestic Hills,” Turner has a scene where characters see people donned in white, which conjures an image of white supremacy. The reality reveals that the bodies are wrapped in beekeepers’ uniforms.
“We, as Black people, are constantly seeing ghosts … haunted by the past and now the present,” Turner said. “That is the point of the book — these characters do what my former husband and I did years ago — they move out of the city, believing they want to have a different experience. We wound up having neighbors who were beekeepers; they were fantastic.”
When Turner’s family had a health scare, her neighbors stepped up, visited them in the hospital, and made sure their house and cat were OK. Turner says the move she and her husband made in the late ’80s would not be one she would do in today’s America. When the couple in “Majestic Hills” moves to suburbia, we see how they navigate the new space. Some neighbors are wonderful, others carry an outsider vibe with something simmering beneath.
“There are more things that connect us than divide us, even in this crazy time, and that is what I’m hoping that ‘Majestic Hills’ shows,” she said.
Turner points to characters at the beginning of the book who were allies and remain so through the end.
“The challenge in today’s America is that there was a time when we were trying to know people beyond the surface stuff. Now it’s all surface,” Turner said. “I think the more things change, the more we have to be change agents. The world is changing at a rapid pace, but we all play a role in trying to make sure that people aren’t left behind because of it.”
If you go
Dawn Turner will be in conversation about “Majestic Hills” with former Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens at 7 p.m. Aug. 11 at Women & Children First Bookstore, 5233 N. Clark St., 773-769-9299 and womenandchildrenfirst.com