My Mother's Black Child, by Necholia Johnson Beck, will launch as a trade paperback in July 2004 by Helm Publishing. Rural Arkansas in the 1940's was a place of intolerance where it was difficult enough to grow up as an African-American, but it was twice as hard if you were in a family where the color of your skin mattered more than love itself. Hurt and anger touched a little girl who couldn't understand how her mother would feel so strongly about something that shouldn't matter at all. Only after years of emotional abuse, a special friend made her realize that the content of her character meant more than the color of her skin. This is a story of one woman's fight to gain love from a mother who rejected her from birth based on her dark skin color.