LeeCapler
Before she ever learned to dream, True Elise Okoye-Carter learned how to endure.
Raised in the American South by a devoted mother, True was taught that survival came from effort, gratitude, and silence. She became the woman who carried teams without titles, loved without guarantees, and learned to make herself smaller in rooms that benefited from her labor but never offered her rest. Corporate America rewarded her discipline, dating culture tested her self-worth, and life made it clear that softness was a luxury she could not afford.
What True never knew was that her story began long before her own.
Years earlier, a brilliant Black American woman and the heir to a powerful West African dynasty fell in love across oceans and expectations. Naomi Carter and Kwame Okoye built a quiet life rooted in devotion, ambition, and sacrifice-until tragedy severed their future and buried their truth beneath grief, distance, and unspoken loyalty. What remained was silence... and a daughter raised far from the legacy that claimed her.
When that silence finally breaks, True is pulled into a world she was never prepared to imagine-one of bloodlines, inheritance, and ancestral responsibility. As her life stretches between the United States and Ghana, she must confront the collision of who she was forced to become and who she was always meant to be.
Soft Life, Hard Crown is a sweeping, modern story of love, grief, and reclamation. It is a novel about Black womanhood beyond survival-about unlearning scarcity, choosing softness without apology, and discovering that inheritance is not just what is given, but what is finally received. Sometimes crowns are not heavy with power. Sometimes, they feel like rest.