Maura Cheeks Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Maura Cheeks
Maura Cheeks has published writing in the Paris Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Tin House, among other places.

In 2018, she was selected to attend Tin House’s Winter Workshop and was one of just seven people picked to attend Jamel Brinkley’s Tin House Craft Intensive.

In 2019, she was awarded a masthead reporting residency with The Atlantic where she produced a feature-length article which later inspired the idea for her book.

“Acts of Forgiveness” was named a most anticipated book by Real Simple, Elle, The Root, and The Millions. Maura was named by Publishers Weekly one of “10 Writers to Watch”.

Maura is also the general manager and owner of Liz’s Book Bar.

Maura prefers writing in the morning from 5:30 AM until about 7 or 7:30. She tries her best to write a draft all the way through without too much self editing. It allows her to feel the characters and see where they want to go. Then she begins researching all of the areas that she feels are lacking specificity or places where she knows she needs to go even deeper.

She reads a lot, and generally doesn’t continue reading a book unless she is feeling inspired by it in some way. Maura believes consistently engaging with books which push her to think about different forms and styles keeps her motivated and excited to continuing to improve her own work.

To research “Acts of Forgiveness”, she went to Natchez and Jackson and met with employees at the Historic Natchez Foundation and Mississippi Department of Archives. They were instrumental in helping her write about Willie’s journey, and helped Maura imagine what it must have been like to go there with just limited information and attempt to find what she was looking for.

She relied heavily on a book by Dee Parmer Woodtor called “Finding A Place Called Home” to better understand what goes into genealogy research and better comprehend what’s conveyed through certain documents. She researched Civil Liberties Act of 1988, too.

Maura began writing the novel in 2019 after writing the article for The Atlantic about the racial wealth gap. So when she first began writing the novel, she was thinking about the country’s inability to deal with the systemic inequalities that we’ve been facing for such a long time, like the fact that the proportion of Black people living in poverty has remained at relatively three times that of white people for more than fifty years.

Obviously as she wrote the book the world changed and she was pushed to keep writing since suddenly such a thing like reparations which she was imagining was being talked about in a serious way. There are brutal murders mentioned in the book and refer to the fact that she was emotional after reading and watching all the videos about Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery.

“Acts of Forgiveness” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2024. In a tender hearted and stirring debut novel about inheritance and ambition, one family grapples with just how much of their lineage they are willing to unearth to participate in the nation’s first federal reparations program.

Every American waits with bated breath to see whether or not the country’s first female president is going to pass the Forgiveness Act. This bill would let Black families to claim up to $175,000 if they’re able to prove that they’re the descendants of slaves and for Willie Revel (an ambitious single mom) this bill could be a long-awaited form of redemption.

Ten years ago, she gave up her burgeoning journalism career in order to help run her dad’s struggling construction company in Philadelphia and she’s reluctantly put family first without ever being able to forget who she might’ve become. Now, she is back living with her parents and young daughter as she tries to prevent her family from going into bankruptcy. Could the Forgiveness Act uncover her forgotten roots as it also helps save their beloved home and her dad’s life work?

To qualify, Willie has to prove that the Revel family are descended from slaves, however the rest of the family’s not too eager to dig the past up. Her mom’s adopted; her dad has zero trust in the government and believes working with a morally corrupt employer is the better way to save the business; and her daughter really just wants to make it through the fifth grade at her elite private school without attracting any unwanted attention. So it’s up to Willie to verify their ancestry and save the family, however as she delves into their history, she learns exactly how complex forgiveness and family can really be.

With moving prose and powerful insight, this novel asks how history shapes who we become and to fully consider the weight of success when it’s achieved despite incredible odds, and ultimately what leaving a legacy behind really means.

This is a vibrant and moving debut novel which takes to heart our deferred dreams and the value of staying hopeful. Maura’s tender and layered tale lets us witness one family’s journey while they plant seeds, dig up roots, and bloom, all as they contend with injustices and fight for redemption in the world around them.

This is the rare sort of novel which lays out a hypothetical public policy and its attendant bureaucracy, weaving a tale with an imaginative yet realistic exploration of what reparations might look like, what may get missed and what could be achieved. However above all, it’s a story about family, with all of the challenge, interconnection, ambiguity, obligation, and love that the term carries. It’s a thoughtful, generous, and thought provoking novel about inheritance in all forms.

It asks urgent and pressing questions about reckoning with this nation’s history, and what it offers by way of answers is incredibly moving. Her ability to render a painful past, an unfixed present, and a hopeful future through the Revels’ fears and hopes is quite astonishing. It’s a gripping novel with heart and intellect. Maura extends depth, humanity, hope, and complexity to a portion of the American experience which too often gets flattened out into talking points.