Eve Whalen, privileged child of an old-money Atlanta family, meets Daniella Gold in the fall of 1962, on their first day at Belmont College. Paired as roommates, the two become fast friends. Daniella, raised in Georgetown by a Jewish father and a Methodist mother, has always felt caught between two worlds. But at Belmont, her bond with Eve allows her to experience a deep sense of belonging. That is, until the girls’ expanding awareness of the South’s caste system forces them to question everything they thought they knew about the world and their places in it.

Eve veers toward radicalism—a choice pragmatic Daniella cannot fathom. After a tragedy, Eve returns to Daniella for help in beginning anew, hoping to shed her past. But the past isn’t so easily buried, as Daniella and Eve discover when their daughters are caught up in secrets meant to stay hidden.

“This latest from White is highly recommended for its absorbing characterization and engrossing plot that perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the 1960s.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“Few books capture the zeitgeist the way this one does.” — Karin Slaughter, Parade

Publish Date: August 6, 2019

An Indiebound “Next Pick,” Target “Club Pick,” and beloved fan favorite, A Place at the Table chronicles three nuanced characters whose lives intersect in an eccentric, midtown Manhattan café. With inspiration drawn from New York’s landmark Café Nicholson and rooted in author Susan Rebecca White’s love of cooking, A Place at the Table offers a powerful testament to the outer journeys that lead to inner healing.

While the book is a work of fiction, White’s imagination was sparked by the life of Edna Lewis, the legendary African-American chef and author of many books, including the timeless A Taste of Country Cooking, who helped found Café Nicholson in the late 1940s – and was later a dear friend and mentor to chef Scott Peacock.

Spanning from a settlement of formerly enslaved people in 1920s North Carolina to Manhattan in the 1980s, A Place at the Table celebrates the healing power of food and the magic of New York City as three seekers come together, learning that their lives can be more connected, meaningful, and interesting than they ever thought possible.

–“No writer should be able to write smoothly and cleanly from three very different perspectives about lost love, betrayal, pound cake, fear, family ties, racism, Baptists, ‘the other,’ Episcopalians, the South, and New York. But Susan Rebecca White has–and without a false note nor a single sentimental pink bow.” — Clyde Edgerton

Read a chapter from A Place at the Table.

Publish Date: June 4, 2013

For more than ten years, Naomi and Phil Harrison enjoyed a marriage of heady romance, tempered only by the needs of their children. But on a vacation alone, the couple dies when the small plane they charter to fly them over the Grand Canyon crashes. Afterwards, their daughters, Ruthie and Julia, are shocked by the provisions in their will.

Spanning nearly two decades, the sisters’ journeys take them from their familiar home in Atlanta to eye-opening San Francisco, a mountain town in Virginia, the campus of Berkeley, and a loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As they heal from loss, search for love, and begin careers, their sisterhood, once an oasis, becomes complicated by resentment, anger, and jealousy. It seems as though the echoes of their parents’ deaths will never stop reverberating until another shocking accident rearranges everything once again.

“In her first book, White slyly exposed bigotry and classism by letting her characters speak for themselves. Here, too, she presents Ruthie warts-and-all—vulnerable, petty, inexplicably hot and cold toward Julia—her roller-coaster emotions sometimes infuriating, at other times all too human. However, “A Soft Place to Land” forgoes comic relief in favor of a more complex and layered portrait of a young woman.” – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Publish Date: April 6, 2010

By turns hilarious and poignant, the lives of three Southern women — a wealthy Atlanta matron, her rebellious teenage daughter, and the precocious child of the woman hired to clean their house — intersect in unexpected and extraordinary ways in this debut novel of family, friendship, and folly.

“White’s wit and graceful prose yield sharp insights about family, friendship and faith in the ever-changing South…. A wonderful debut.” – Publishers Weekly

“Like its characters, Bound South comes dressed in innocence and comedy, a series of hilarious and poignant stories told in gossipy backyard-fence style. But underneath, its concerns are far more serious…” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“This acclaimed funny and poignant debut novel describes the clashes between the new and old South…” – San Francisco Examiner

Publish Date: February 10, 2009