Ronald L. Conkle

Toad in the Mud Ronald L. Conkle

What Happens When You Wake Up 65 Years Late-

And Are No Longer a Second-Class Citizen?

In 1932, Emma Mae Brown-a young, pregnant Southern black woman-thought she was signing up for some quick cash. The task seemed simple: Go to sleep for a couple weeks as part of a government-funded research project. It was all part of a secret contingency plan designed to keep key Americans alive for an indefinite period of time without undue hardship on the body-like frogs hibernating in the mud during long drought periods.

But policies shift. Projects get canceled. And what was supposed to last five weeks ended up taking 65 years.

Fast forward to 1997. Some young medical students are about to discover what remains of this long-forgotten experiment in an old abandoned research facility in Los Angeles County. Their shocking finding will cause a sensation-and rewrite the rules of science.

Now, a resuscitated Emma Mae Brown finds herself in a very different place at a very different time. After a long rehabilitation, she's faced with a culture and a lifestyle she knows nothing about. Then there's the challenge of raising children-fathered by a man she had met only the day before the experiment. And when her 1930s, Jim Crow-era survival skills clash with the 1990s, the government decides to get involved-and tries to take away the one thing that Emma knows she can count on...