With Her Baby on Her Back - Suzette D. Harrison - ★★★.¾

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AUTHOR: Suzette D. Harrison
GENRE: Historical Fiction
PUBLICATION DATE: July 13, 2026
RATING: 3.75 stars.


In a Nutshell: A historical fiction novel inspired by a true story. Good use of a dual-timeline narrative. Strong characters, compelling writing, many moral values. Realistic depiction of both eras. Somewhat slow and repetitive in between. Recommended to fans of the genre.


Plot Preview:
1848. Mississippi. Enslaved midwife Zinnie has no choice but to follow her owner when he begins a two-thousand-mile journey from Mississippi to Utah. With her newborn daughter strapped to her back and her other two daughters walking by her side, Zinnie knows that her first priority is to make sure that her children are safe. When the party crosses state lines, can Zinnie take a chance and fight for their freedom?
Present day. Texas. Elementary school teacher and single mom Lynette is tired of having to balance the various challenges in her life: her school work, her household chores, and parenting her autistic eleven-year-old named Justus. While cleaning her grandmother’s attic, she finds a sapphire brooch hidden among several other forgotten treasures. This brooch results in a quest to discover more about its owner and how it connects with her grandmother. Will the brave story from the past help Lynette handle her present challenges?
The story comes to us in the first-person perspectives of Zinnie and Lynette from their two timelines.


Plot Preview:
🙌🏼 Zinnie and Lynette as characters. Brave strong women who don’t allow circumstances to bog them down. Great leads for this genre.

🙌🏼 Several strong supporting characters in both timelines. Many of them are layered.

🙌🏼 The portrayal of the struggles of slavery and the enslaved people.

🙌🏼 The way autism is written into the plot and how it is not the be-all and end-all of Justus.

🙌🏼 The civil and cooperative relationship Lynette has with her ex. Quite unlike most fictional novels with single parents.

🙌🏼 The details of the historical journey, combining elements of a road trip with a challenging adventure.

🙌🏼 As always in a dual timeline book, both timelines are not equally engrossing. The historical time has a clear advantage in terms of being compelling and gritty. But the modern timeline also has its strengths and clear independence of subplots, and doesn’t function merely as a narrative prop for the other timeline.


Bookish Okays:
✊🏼 The research in the historical depiction is evident, but Zinnia’s voice feels too modern at times, as if she is spouting thoughts way beyond her era.

✊🏼 There is religious content in both timelines. Though this does not get too preachy, it was still more frequent than I had anticipated.

✊🏼 As the story is tagged as being based on the life of Biddy Mason, I was disappointed that she isn't a character in the book. The author's note offers the right amount of insight into the inspiration behind this story, but it would have been great to see Biddy being a main character.

✊🏼 The pacing is dragged, especially in the middle section. The historical narrative feels repetitive at times. But this can be partly explained by Zinnie’s circumstances at that point, which are equally stuck.


Bookish Nays:
👎🏼 The dual first-person narrative gets confusing at times. Despite the distinctness of their circumstances, the voices of the two characters sound similar. I wish one POV had been in third person.


Overall, though the proceedings were a bit slower than I would have liked, I still appreciated thus historical fiction novel highlighting the challenges of the enslaved under the mercurial white slave owners. The historical content and the two lead characters are powerful enough to offset any other shortcoming of the book.

This is my second novel by this author, the first being ‘The Dust Bowl Orphans’. Based on these two experiences, I would definitely love to read more of her strong OwnVoices works.

Recommended to readers of historical fiction looking for a story with strong characters and good writing.

My thanks to Bookouture for providing the DRC of “With Her Baby on Her Back” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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