A Very Special Episode

by Camille Acker

Genres: General Fiction; African American; African American Women's Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

In Washington, D.C.’s powerful Black elite, legacy is everything. When a young heir to one of the city’s most influential institutions seeks funding to cement her future, a shadowy organization offers to help—but it could cost her far more than she’s willing to give.

“A biting satire about the ever-shifting ways to perform Blackness. This is a very special book.”—Bridgett M. Davis, author of The World According to Fannie Davis

Nina Johnson has always taken pride in belonging to The Tenth. After all, she’s following in the footsteps of her ancestors: Her great-great-grandmother founded the prestigious DC society—a space for influential African Americans—just forty years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Nina’s been elected to helm the organization, but she’s determined to escape the influence of her mother, who has led the organization with a steadfast commitment to tradition, all while keeping Nina under her freshly manicured thumb. Nina’s determined to forge her own path and do things differently: fewer stuffy, out-of-touch meetings and boring galas, more young people, and a swankier headquarters.

To realize her ambitions, Nina needs funding. So, when a wealthy white benefactor named Sienna Masters offers financial support in exchange for her participation in a mysterious project at a former public housing complex, The Orchard, Nina ignores her initial skepticism and agrees to a partnership. But as Nina and those closest to her piece together Sienna's true motives, they discover far more sinister forces at play, ones that exploit Nina's community for profit, with stakes that extend far beyond her ambitions for The Tenth. But how far is Nina willing to go to shape her future? And what is she willing to sacrifice along the way?

A whip-smart and sly social commentary on the complex interplay of race, class, and family legacy, A Very Special Episode will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Release date: August 18, 2026

Publisher: Random House

Print pages: 304

Sample

Episode One

Let Me Find Out She’s a Credit to Her Race

Juneteenth was the better brand, even though Emancipation Day came first. Enslaved Washingtonians got freed way before those Texans got wind of it, but the last shall always get the better marketing. In 1862, Lincoln signed the DC Emancipation Act into law, telling Black folks what they already knew: they were much too good to keep enduring this shit. The Emancipation Day parades started four years later when Nina’s great-great-grandmother and her upper-class equals, who would eventually found The Tenth, marched through DC in impeccably starched collars and fashionable hats. It all stopped in 1901 when the Black folks without showed up. Without an education, without a deed, without the siddity necessary to show the white man they were equal to, if not better than, him. In 1904, when The Tenth was founded, their Emancipation Day celebrations became quiet, respectable gatherings in well-appointed Georgetown homes. Then it became the Emancipation Ball, but once the word “Juneteenth” entered the East Coast Black lexicon, an ordinary word like “emancipation” just wouldn’t do.

That, at least, was the way Nina summarized the history to her boyfriend, Booker, on their way into the “Juneteenth: Gone but Not Forgotten” gala. Not that he needed the recitation, since he too was a legacy in The Tenth, although not descended from a founder as she was. Delores, possessor of the womb from which Nina had escaped and current president of The Tenth, had vigorously campaigned to keep Emancipation Day, calling the phrase “elegant” and the term Juneteenth “déclassé.” But in a rare victory over her mother, Nina and her fellow members of The Tenth steering committee had agreed to the renaming. Although her mother had stipulated that they would celebrate Juneteenth a week early, to counter any residual perception of CP Time.

Now, tonight, after years of her mother’s promises, Nina would ascend the throne and accept her birthright. She would finally become president of The Tenth at the event of the social season. Nina strutted into the sprawling downtown DC hotel lobby wearing a dark blue floor-length gown and a grin that not even Delores could dim. A few feet ahead of her, in the center of the gold and marble tile floor, a sign pointed them toward the hotel’s grand ballroom.

Nina wouldn’t have won the “election” for president without her mother, although she was loath to add any more fuel to the wildfire that was her mother’s ego. If the rumors were to be believed, the other candidate was the product of an Afrocentric charter school, an atheist, and so broke she worked part-time at a yoga studio across town in exchange for a membership. Nina had even overheard her mother shamefully telling one member of The Tenth: “Her résumé says Spelman, but I hear she only spent her last year there and went to a community college first. Do we want that kind of person to lead our beloved organization?”

Nina didn’t know if any of it was true and she certainly didn’t condone her mother’s dirty campaigning, but she really was the best choice. Her corporate job meant she had a powerful network and no one else had the vision for The Tenth she had. No more boring galas like this. No more meandering meetings at the stuffy homes of controlling old women on DC’s posh Gold Coast. Nina would recruit younger people to join, completely revamp their communications, and, with an inside track on a condo, purchase a space for a swank new headquarters. She had ambitions and the presidency was only step one.

Step two involved the man whose arm she held on to, Booker. The cover of that week’s Washingtonian magazine had wondered, “Is Booker T. Bruce the Next Mayor of DC?” The answer? Hell, yes. He was ahead in the polls, generally liked by the progressives without alienating the Black and white power brokers. The primary was only one week away, and once he won, victory in the fall general election would be assured. The city would be his, which meant the city would be theirs, unofficially. Officially, everything his would be hers as soon as he dropped that knee and popped that question. Plus, in her mother’s eyes, he could do no wrong.

When Nina turned to take him in—deathly dapper in his navy and black tuxedo—he wasn’t doing so bad in her eyes either.

“You ready?” Booker asked. He winked. A wink from most men would come off as corny, but from Booker it made Nina feel safe, a reassurance that they were in this night together.

“I am ready,” Nina said. The words bounced off the marble and landed loud on her ears, taking her a bit by surprise. In a couple of hours’ time, she would be out from under her mother’s manicured thumb.

Although not as soon as she would have liked, because steps away from the sign pointing them to the ballroom was her mother, wearing a black silk robe that barely covered the tulle of a voluminous skirt, run-walking toward them. Her face was already made up and her hair was turbaned in yet more silk. It must have really been an emergency for her mother to be in a public place in a robe, albeit a designer one.

“Nina!” her mother said when she arrived at their gathering of two. “Come with me. I need you.” Her hand clamped down on Nina’s arm and pulled. Soon Nina found herself navigating halting steps down a hallway.

“Mother,” Nina said, long seconds into her kidnapping. “What is happening?”

“Disaster is what’s happening,” Delores gritted. “No one has all of their lines memorized and you promised you would be here thirty minutes ago.”

Nina had promised to get there earlier, but it seemed to her that narrowing the window of tonight was better for them both. Less obsequious praise of her mother from her and less backhanded praise of her by her mother. (“So hard to pull off a green that bright” had been her mother’s declaration about Nina’s outfit for The Tenth’s spring picnic.) Her mother came to a sharp stop and Nina caught herself before her body lurched forward.

“Now, you need to put this on quickly and meet me backstage.” Delores deposited a pile of clothes into Nina’s newly freed arms. “In there.” Her mother gestured to the door she’d stopped in front of, labeled ladies.

“Mother, we agreed I would only give my speech at the end—”

“You’ll still do that, of course, of course. This will just be a bit of a bonus performance. A sort of ‘lights, camera, action’ moment for you in front of all of our nearest and dearest of The Tenth.” At “lights, camera, action,” her mother had flung her hands into the air, as if conjuring a marquee.

Nina thumbed through the clothes: a black tuxedo, a white shirt, and white gloves.

“Mother . . .”

“Oh, and this,” Delores said, before depositing a tube of Bronzer No. 4 on top of the pile.

Nina’s head snapped up when she envisioned herself in a tux and white gloves with darkened skin. “This is like a—a”—Nina lowered her voice and checked over both of her shoulders for passersby—“a minstrel show.”

“Darling,” her mother said. “Stop, it’s nothing of the kind.”

“Mother, with my light skin, I’ll look like Judy Garland circa 1932.”

“I hope not! This show is set in 1865, Nina. Are you ashamed of our history?” Delores pressed a hand to the base of her throat, a posture of her disapproval.

Nina knew it well. She lifted her tongue to tell her mother that a minstrel show was something to be ashamed of, but instead of letting Delores have it, Nina pressed her tongue forcefully onto the roof of her mouth. Her mother was the only parent Nina and her younger sister, Bett, had. Their father had died of a heart attack shortly after Obama had been elected president the first time. “I can’t believe those crackers voted for him,” her father had said. Her mother told everyone at the funeral at least he had gotten the chance to vote for the first Black president, when he had faithfully cast ballots for Republicans for decades.

“Do as I . . . what?” Delores paused for Nina to finish, but her patience gave way almost immediately. “Say. Do as I say, Nina.”

Nina nodded again and again and again, as if the agitation of her head might manage to levitate her body and get her the hell away from this moment. She had been dressing up at her mother’s direction for the majority of her life, from the pram to her cotillion and through every social season for the last twenty years. Nina knew the fine gradations of a dress that was semiformal but not quite cocktail and the nuances of black-tie versus white-tie. She had racks of all-white outfits for the all-white brunches and dinners and balls. The members of The Tenth loved all things white.

“Oh good! Bett can help you get into costume.” Delores gazed over Nina’s shoulder and wiggled her fingers in greeting before she instructed Nina to “meet me backstage in the ballroom” and swept away.

Nina didn’t turn around at first, attempting to delay the inevitable. “Let me guess, you’re actually going to participate in this coonery?”