IN THE GARDEN OF OF OUR DREAM

by Shrlee Taylor Haizlip and Harold C. Haizlip Like a storybook romance, this one begins when a beautiful and captivating young woman of privilege and a brilliant Harvard man meet at college, fall in love and marry. Together they have children and combine successful careers with an unflagging commitment to each other. Told in alternating voices, this is a portrait of a marriage, a Rashoman-like view of a nearly forty-year love affair. But unlike other love stories, the story the Haizlips have to tell also opens a window on some of the most important years in America's struggles with issues of education, race, class, opportunity and equality. Born into a generation reared in segregation. Harold, the Southerner, and Shirlee, the Northerner, used their many talents to engage white and black America at all levels, whether it was the charity circuit of New York high society or school integration in the South End of Boston. Just as they strove to marry their differences in reaching for a common happiness, so they joined the larger struggle of their generation to achieve integration and racial equality. By turns intimate, funny and blissful; at others raw with honesty, bitterness and passion, the Haizlips are born storytellers. As often as they relive the triumphs and joys of their journey together, they recall the failures, the racism and the despair that attended them as well. Yet underlying all their efforts remains the ballast of their love and the endurance of their commitment - not only to each other but to the highest ideals of their time and their country.

Paperback: 306 pages