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The complex friendship between a black housekeeper and her Jewish employer is at the heart of Hoffman’s prize-winning novel about life in the civil rights era South

Nebraska Waters is black. Vivian Gold is Jewish. In an Alabama kitchen where, for nearly thirty years, they share cups of coffee, fret over their children, and watch the civil rights movement unfold out their window, and into their homes, they are like family—almost.

As Nebraska makes her way, day in and out, to Vivian’s house to cook and help tend the Gold children, the “almost” threatens to widen into a great divide. The two women’s husbands affect their relationship, as do their children, Viv Waters and Benjamin Gold, born the same year and coming of age in a changing South. The bond between the women both strengthens and frays.

Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award and Alabama Library Association Award for fiction, Roy Hoffman’s Almost Family explores the relationship that begins when one person goes to work for another, and their friendship—across lines of race, income, and religion—develops degrees of understanding yet growing misunderstanding.

WINNER OF THE LILLIAN SMITH BOOK AWARD

WINNER OF THE ALABAMA LIBRARY ASSOCIATION AWARD FOR FICTION

The complex friendship between a black housekeeper and her Jewish employer is at the heart of Hoffman’s prize-winning novel about life in the civil rights era South

Almost Family: 35th Anniversary Edition by Roy Hoffman is a powerful and deeply human novel that explores the complicated realities of race, religion, class, and family in the Civil Rights-era South. Set in Alabama and spanning nearly three decades, the story centers on the enduring yet fragile friendship between Nebraska Waters, a Black domestic worker, and Vivian Gold, her Jewish employer. Bound together by daily routines, shared concerns, and genuine affection, the two women develop a relationship that often resembles family while remaining constrained by the racial and social boundaries of their time.

As the Civil Rights Movement reshapes the South, the lives of Nebraska and Vivian become increasingly intertwined with the hopes, fears, and conflicts of their children, husbands, and communities. Through richly drawn characters and keen social observation, Hoffman captures the personal impact of historic change and the ways public events reverberate through private lives. The novel examines both the possibilities for understanding across differences and the misunderstandings that can persist despite years of intimacy and shared experience.

This acclaimed Southern classic offers a moving meditation on friendship, identity, belonging, and the evolving meaning of family in a changing America.