Genre: Historical Literary Fiction

Time: 1990s, Chicago

Comps: Kin by Tayari Jones, Anastasia, and Stomp the Yard, without the stomping (in a very niche way lol).

TLDR: Project Garden is a story centering the Black elite socialites and aristocratic society in 1990s Chicago, featuring Black American debutante culture and cotillion, paralleling conversations of Black queer feminism and urban city living. Intersectioning themes of Black womanhood, motherhood, sisterhood, and Black family legacy.

Summary: Orphaned at birth and forged by the streets, Tansy built a life on graffiti and the fierce loyalty of the Chicago Tag Crew. But when a mission goes tragically wrong—leaving her best friend dead and Tansy behind bars—her world shattered. Ten years later, she’s surviving on community mural gigs and carrying the weight of taking care of her best friend's grieving grandmother, determined to give them the life of security and safety.

Her ticket to security is granted when she’s commissioned to create a mural for Rozanne Collins, the pristine matriarch of Chicago’s elite Black debutante cotillion and Best-selling author of The Beauty Of Your Garden: A Woman’s Guide For A Flourishing Life Through Her Garden. Thrust into a world of polished perfection, blooming gardens, and high-society debutantes, Tansy discovers that the roots disguised have rotten-concealing a dark truth—one that directly ties Rozanne’s family and Tansy’s own tragic past. An unexpected bond is formed with the organizer’s daughter, revealing a shared trap of young women pruned to ideal images of Black womanhood, modeled by legacies.