She quickly becomes very close to one particular family of patients. She confesses to being “uppity,” saying, “our arrogance was a shield against the kind of disdain that did not have the capacity to even conceive of Black intellect.” Her father wanted Civil to follow in his footsteps, but nursing called to her as a way to be closer to patients. She came from an elite Black family, her father a doctor, and her childhood surrounded by educated people. Her adopted daughter knows the story of her parentage, Civil tells us, but not her lineage, how she came “out of a long line of history that defies biology.” That intersection of biology and the chain of struggles and accomplishments that creates history forms the heart of Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s third novel, Take My Hand.Ĭivil’s memory skips back more than 40 years to 1973, when she was a young nurse working at a family-planning clinic in Montgomery, Alabama. At 67, Civil Townsend is troubled not only by her body’s aches and pains but also the bruises of memory.
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