Excerpt from Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Don't ever make me leave again, okay? I don't want to leave again."

She looked down at me, then into the backyard, into the places I played without permission. She grabbed my hand and walked me out toward the trees, grabbing a shovel and a burlap bag next to the grill on the way. We walked farther and farther back until we were in the part of our land where my great-grandfather let the grasses grow long. My grandmother stomped around a bit, then staked the shovel's blade into the dirt. She dug slowly, and with purpose, like she was sneaking up on the earth spread out before us. The ground was soft so it wasn't long before she told me to come closer.

I leaned over the hole and saw a garden snake. No. Two, three, four… a lot of garden snakes. They were in some sort of a knot, though not stuck together. They moved quickly and deliberately over and around one another. They were not fighting, and they did not seem to be trying to get away from us or anything else.

"What are they doing, Grandma?"

My grandmother stared into the hole.

"They're loving each other, baby."

She reached into the bag, poured lighter fluid into the hole, then a lit match. The grass in and around the hole burned, and then, so did the snakes. My first instinct was to reach in and throw them as far as I could, to safety, but I hesitated when I remembered their bite; I waited too long to do them any good.

The snakes did not slither away or thrash around as they burned. They held each other tighter. Even as the scales melted from their bodies, their inclination was to squeeze closer to the other snakes wrapped around them. Their green lengths blackened and bubbled, causing the flesh that simmered underneath each individual metallic hood to ooze. They did not panic, they did not run. I started to cry.

"You will have to go back. We'll both go back home. Your mama misses you."

My grandmother reached over and grabbed my hand, both of us still staring into the hole.

"These things catch fire without letting each other go. We don't give up on our people. We don't stop loving them."

She looked into my face, her eyes watering at the bottoms.

"Not even when we're burning alive."

Excerpted from Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir. Used with the permission of the publisher, Flatiron Books. Copyright © 2021 by Ashley C. Ford.