LIZZY: The Elizabeth Keckley Story, from bondage to becoming America’s first couturière (2025) threads fact and fiction into a genre-bending ode to the perseverance of African Americans. Evelyn G. Nuyda, formerly writing under the penname C. Georgina C., conducts readers’ attention with a maestro’s precision, contrasting gravity and levity in a delicate, honest balance. With genuine characters and undeniable history, Nuyda’s retelling of Elizabeth Keckley’s story shimmers like the finest silk, demanding attention elegantly and proving wholly worthy of it.
A summer day in 1932 Harlem witnesses the silent unveiling of buried history at the hands of Reverend Stansil. Finding a book tucked in the late church founder Reverend William Crowdy’s attic, Stansil discovers the story of a woman obscured by history’s biased hands, a story beginning nearly one hundred and fifteen years to his day.
In February of 1818, in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, Elizabeth’s first breaths tie her to a cruel life of bondage. Born to Agnes Hobbs, her enslaved mother, and Master Burwell, her biological father, Elizabeth enters a life predetermined for her. In an unforgiving world, persevering love and daring hope soothe Elizabeth’s heart; and so begins her long journey, from a young enslaved girl in Virginia to the free couturière of the First Lady.
Nuyda’s characters pop off the page like brocade, rich and alive, with a tenacity that is incredibly human. Their dynamic nature captures readers’ hearts with grace, connecting them across time and place. Of the most prominent characterizations is unsurprisingly Elizabeth’s. Her endurance in a world vying to break her is boldly captured in her persistence to appreciate beauty amidst the monstrosites and dismissals:
“Where she saw drapery too faded for its place in a proper Southern parlor, I saw silk that still gleamed softly in the right light. Where she saw fabric meant to be discarded, I saw the makings of a gown.” (Nuyda, 66)
In injecting the narrative with Elizabeth’s artistic noticings, Nuyda cements her characterization as a dressmaker long before she ever becomes one. As she finally achieves her dream, the reader arrives with her at her destination with complete faith.
Another glowing aspect of the book is the relationships between characters; whether harsh or tender, the dynamics seize the reader’s attention with a mix of realism and dramatic aptitude. The dynamic between Elizabeth—or “Lizzy” as her mother’s husband, George Hobbs, affectionately called her—and her parents, Agnes and George, is one as delicate and intricate as lace. There’s a staggering awareness of the harshness of servitude, contrasted with her mother’s beauty and bravery and George’s tenderness and unwavering love through the forced separation of their family.
From stolen moments where Agnes risked her life to teach Lizzy how to read—“Every stolen moment was spent with my mother quietly guiding my hands across pages of the books she had kept hidden; books she had learned from, even before I was born…” (Nuyda, 26)—to the bittersweet, short-lived reunion of George and his family—“In one swift, unforgiving breath, it became the last time I would see my father, the last time his lips would brush my forehead, the last time I would feel his warmth” (39)—every emotion is heightened and cleverly utilized to reflect the world the characters live in as much as their own dynamics.
Though fleeting on the page, the secondary characters are equally memorable. Albert, an eleven year old enslaved boy, charms readers with his artistry and prevailing innocence. Others like Little Joe and his mother seize readers’ hearts with the heartaching polarity of maternal love in the face of a callous dealing separating him from her:
“There was something about the way she dressed him that caught my breath, something that spoke of loss before the first breath…His boots were battered, worn to near ruin, but she had polished them until they shone like the morning. And the laces, though frayed at the ends,were tied with the kind of care that made them whole again, made them worthy of him, worthy of the beautiful boy he was.” (Nuyda, 44)
Through an equally humanistic portrayal of the Lincolns, Nuyda reinvents historical political figures, delving into their grief and their joy, and it is through that method that she bridges the perceived gap, portraying unity in its rawest form. Matters of race blanch in the face of the human experience as Lizzy holds a grieving Mary Lincoln, as Abraham Lincoln plays with goats.
Despite the historical focus of the book, it is not lacking in relatability. The themes around fashion within offer both introspective and societal commentary on the power of clothes and their role in society, especially for women. In the same vein, Nuyda utilizes dressmaking as a gateway to probing at women’s complex lives in the tangled web of history, race, and freedom.
With its first person narration, LIZZY (2025) embodies the spirit of a memoir packaged in the cloth of historical fiction, immersing readers in a story so honest, it radiates with the authenticity of a true autobiography. Nuyda’s dressmaking expertise and research shine through the book’s fashion nuances, underscoring the frank storytelling with undeniable notes of beauty and wisdom that linger beyond the last page. Now being adapted into a play, readers can expect LIZZY ’s theatrical debut in LA in Spring 2026.
Find out more about LIZZY on the official website
Tassneem Abdulwahab (she/her) is an aspiring writer and editor with a BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing from UWE Bristol. With a strong interest in culture, history, and psychology and a love for fiction, her writing often draws on one or more of these threads to tell character-centric stories. Trained in oil painting, she exhibited and sold two portrait paintings in February 2025. In her free time, you can find her buying more books (no, seriously—she owns four editions of Little Women), snapping pictures of the little details, or sitting at her easel.
