The land

The Land is a novel by the American writer Mildred D. Taylor, published in 1999. It is a prequel to her Logan family books, which began with Song of the Trees, and it tells the story of the grandfather of the family's earlier narrator.

Paul-Edward Logan is nine years old when the book opens, and his childhood is not like that of most children of his time and place. His father owns land and has acknowledged him openly, so Paul grows up in the house with his white half-brothers rather than in the quarters, and the differences between them become harder to ignore as he grows. He looks white, which brings trouble from both directions: Black people he meets suspect him of siding with the people who own the land, and white people who take him for one of their own become dangerous when they discover his mother's family. His friendship with Mitchell Thomas, a boy whose father works for Paul's father, begins with bullying and becomes something more durable.

The novel follows Paul from boyhood into his mid-twenties as he tries to earn and keep land of his own in the 1870s and 1880s, and its dialogue is written in the southern speech of the period. It won the Coretta Scott King Award in 2002.