By Dori Sanders
 
Dori Sanders's first novel, Clover, earned rave reviews, wide national sales, a Walt Disney movie option, the coveted Lillian Smith Award, and its author's appearance on NBC's "Sunday Today" show.
 
In her eagerly awaited second novel, Her Own Place, Sanders again delights in the comedy and keen pathos of everyday life as it is lived by everyday people - black and white.
 
The only child of South Carolina tenant farmer and still in her teens when she marries, Mae Lee Barnes saves her wages from a job at a munitions plant, buys farmland of her own, and waits for her husband's return from World War II.
 
He returns. Then he departs, returns, departs. He will not stay put. Eventually he is gone for good, but not until Mae Lee is left with five children to raise and a farm to run, by herself.
 
Mae Lee is, in succession, war bride, abandoned wife, proud mother, dutiful daughter, sucessful farmer, retiree and town dweller, equally proud grandmother, first Black hospital auxiliary member, elegant hostess, avid Braves fan, coper with things as they come. How does she do it?
 
She isn't Gifted, Brilliant, All-Knowing; she is - well, Mae Lee Barnes is simply Indomitable. And while she is going about her life, the lives of Black people and white people, the rural community and little town she retires to are changing. 
 
Without sermons, without pronouncements, Dori Sanders tells a story about ordinary, everyday people taking part in a momentous transformation involving ways of heart and mind. Mae Lee Barnes feels and participates in the change. But, in the end, she's still Mae Lee Barnes, still taking things as they come, still anticipating.
 
Dori Sanders's Her Own Place is a story to savor, to treasure. Above all, it's a story to enjoy.