"Caudell’s gifts recall Toni Morrison. Sentence after sentence reads like poetry. The earth and sea come alive through her words, as though the author’s language gave birth to the natural world itself. Simply stunning."—Anuradha Bhagwati, author of Unbecoming: A Memoir of Disobedience
"A breathtaking memoir in the spirit of Jesmyn Ward. Growing up in the shadows of Jim Crow that persisted longer on the Eastern Shore than in other places, Caudell shares her childhood journey on landscapes rife with prejudice, disappointment, and, yet, still full of hope. A treasure and an absolute must-read!"—Kate Clifford Lawson, New York Times best-selling author of Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer
"Caudell’s eloquent memoir of place, of time, speaks poetry of the personal experiences of life that touch us all, ancestors and descendants. This timelessness is embedded in American histories of race, mixture, segregation, and integration, the seen and unseen."—Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol
Description
In this lyrical memoir, Robin Michel Caudell meditates on memory and identity as she traces her childhood in a Black family navigating poverty and racism on the Delmarva Peninsula. Many know Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman’s exodus stories out of bondage in rural Maryland, but what about the people who stayed? It is from this place and history that Caudell’s story begins. Growing up in the segregated 1960s, Caudell is the living legacy of the ones who did not run away and of the Free People of Color/Christianized Indians who partnered with their enslaved brethren in a precarious dance of love in Chesapeake Country.
The memoir’s title references a physical anomaly, believed to be indicative of Indigenous ancestry, which skips generations among Caudell’s Kellum kin. This trait is visible as a dark line that extends upward from the Achilles tendon, a visible link to her ancestry. An emotional odyssey, Black Heel Strings weaves Caudell’s adult and childhood memories into a vivid story that honors belonging, resilience, and recovery in her community and in this place.
About the Author
An award-winning journalist and videographer, Robin Michel Caudell is a staff writer at the Press Republican. Her poetry has been anthologized in national and international publications. A native of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Caudell is a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park and Goddard College. She is an alumna of Cave Canem, Gotham Writers Workshop, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She served in the US Air Force and was a John L. Levitow Honor Graduate.
May 2026