Lisa Williamson Rosenberg’s ‘Embers On the Wind’ BLAC Book Review

Embers on the Wind by Lisa Williamson Rosenberg is a heartwarming story of love, loss, and family.

This new novel of women connected by motherhood, slavery’s legacy, and histories, span centuries and draws inspiration from an Underground Railroad safe house that belonged to her father-in-law and was said to be haunted by the spirit of a formerly enslaved woman. In the novel, a fictionalized version of that safe house, where two freedom seekers once hid and died, has been transformed into a fashionably distressed vacation rental in the Berkshires that attracts a particular type of modern-day renter: Black women. Among them are a single mother in search of an ancestor; her lover, Michelle, who has journeyed to the mountains to heal from trauma; and Michelle’s sister, a seer whose visions reveal the secrets of the former safe house—along with her own. 

“One reason I became a therapist was that it was a career that gave me flexibility and time to write” says Rosenberg. “What I didn’t realize was that by the time I had the credentials and experience for a private therapy practice, I’d be using the flexibility for parenting, which delightfully crowded out every other endeavor in my life, writing included.By the time my youngest was in preschool, I felt ready to squeeze writing back in.”

For each of the characters in Embers on the Wind, true freedom could come only from uncovering their connection to history—and to the spirits awaiting peace and redemption within the walls of Whittaker House.

“I had recently done a talk at a synagogue about multiracial Jewish identity, which I ultimately published. At each stage I learned more about myself and about the world I was raising my children in,” says Rosenberg. “Soon I gained the courage to venture outside my blog and began publishing some of my essays. All the while there was always a novel in the works. EMBERS ON THE WIND is the first to make it into the light.”