Onesie Delilah

About the Book

Onesie Delilah is Lilah McAfee’s story, from her birth in 1926 in an Alabama mill town through three-quarters of a century, against the backdrop of family and community expectations in a Southland undergoing dramatic social and economic changes. Throughout her life, Lilah yearns for a loving relationship with her beautiful and selfish mother, but their fragile bonds are shattered when in the 1950s Lilah has a romantic encounter with a black man. Her actions precipitate murder, and she must deal with her sense of involvement and her suspicions regarding the killer’s identity, as well as with widening rifts within her family. The events of her life take her through three marriages, from poverty to wealth, from loss and loneliness to strength and self-fulfillment. Dubbed “Onesie” by the Negro midwife, Lilah lives up to this recognition of her birth order and prediction of predominance, for she is resoundingly a survivor.

About the Author

Onesie Delilah is the first novel by Diane Miller, a retired professor. Her current project, with the working title Old Falcon and Other Stories, is a collection of short fiction about Southern women of the twentieth century. Diane lives with her husband Jim in Gulfport, Mississippi, beside scenic Bayou Bernard.