In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. In the journal he kept during his trip he describes the war-ravaged city of Mosul and the children he encounters growing up amid its ruins. He contemplates the graffiti-strewn ruins of Saddam Hussein's former palaces, and he notes the c...

Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her fathers explosive temper and seek refuge at her mothers ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the familys trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joans grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets...