4 cassettes / 4 hours

Read by Audra McDonald

"Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer."

-The New York Times Book Review

A family from the United States goes to the remote Sierras in Mexico - the writer-to-be, Susannah; her sister, Magdalena; her father and mother.  And there, amid an endangered band of mixed-race Blacks and Indians called the Mundo, they begin an encounter that will change them more than they could ever dream.  

Moving back and forth in time, and among unforgettable characters and their stories, Walker crosses conventional borders of all kinds as she explores in this magical novel the ways in which a woman's denied sexuality leads to the loss of the much prized self, even as her family's past of lies and love is transformed.

By the Light of My Father's Smile explores the richness and coherence of alternative cultures' experience of sexuality as a celebration of life, of trust in Nature and the Spirit, even as it affirms the belief, as Walker says, "that it is the triumphant heart, not the conquered heart, that forgives.  And that love is both timeless and beyond time."