Desert Rose details Coretta Scott King's upbringing in a family of proud, land-owning African Americans with a profound devotion to the ideals of social equality and the values of education, as well as her later role as her husband's most trusted confidant and advisor. 

Coretta Scott King—noted author, human rights activist, and wife and partner of famed Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King Jr.—grew up in the rural Alabama Black Belt with her older sister, Edythe Scott Bagley. Bagley chronicles the sisters’ early education together at the Crossroads School and later at the progressive Lincoln School in Marion. She describes Coretta’s burgeoning talent for singing and her devotion to musical studies, and the sisters’ experiences matriculating at Antioch College, an all-white college far from the rural South. Bagley provides vivid insights into Coretta’s early passion for racial and economic justice, which lead to her involvement in the Peace Movement and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

As Coretta’s older sister, Edythe shared in almost all of Coretta’s many trials and tribulations. Desert Rose charts Coretta’s hesitance about her romance with Martin Luther King and the prospect of having to sacrifice her dream of a career in music to become a minister’s wife. Ultimately, Coretta chose to utilize her artistic gifts and singing voice for the Movement through the development and performance of Freedom Concerts. This book also charts Coretta’s own commitment and dedication, in the years that followed King’s death, to the causes of international civil rights, the antiapartheid movement, and the establishment of the King Center in Atlanta and the national King Holiday. Coretta’s devotion to activism, motherhood, and the movement led by her husband, and her courageous assumption of the legacy left in the wake of King’s untimely assassination, are wonderfully detailed in this intimate biography.

“Desert Rose is a must-read for anyone interested in learning about the first family of the Civil Rights Movement. This book offers an insightful look at the life of Coretta Scott King, and by default the life of Dr. King, from a unique and rare perspective. It provides an excellent ground-level view of African American life in Perry County and in Alabama’s Black Belt.”
—Hasan Kwame Jeffries, author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt

“Coretta Scott King, like so many women during the Civil Rights Movement, has never gotten her just due other than being Mrs. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But her work and leadership was just as instrumental in advancing the cause of Black folk. Desert Rose puts the light on Coretta and her family, and allows us to revel in the courageous work of a remarkable family, and definitely a strong and fearless woman like Coretta Scott King.”
—Roland S. Martin, nationally syndicated columnist and author of Speak, Brother! A Black Man's View of America