Mother of Pearl (novel) Mother of Pearl (novel) "See Nacre for material produced by mollusks." Mother of Pearl (1999) is a novel by Melinda Haynes, and was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection, June 1999. The audio version is performed by Nana Visitor. Set in Petal, Mississippi, a small town at the close of the 1950s, this novel tells the story of the 28-year-old Even Grade, a black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, a 15-year-old white girl, who is the daughter of the town prostitute and an unknown father. They are both separately seeking the family, love, and affection
Pearl (given name) been inspired by the name Margaret, which means "pearl". In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel "The Scarlet Letter", heroine Hester Prynne names her illegitimate daughter Pearl because the child is "of great price, purchased with all she had, her mother's only treasure." The passage refers to the Parable of the Pearl in the New Testament. The gates to Heaven are also commonly pictured as made of pearl. It was among the 50 most popular names for girls born in the United States between 1880 and 1911, remained among the top 100 most popular names for girls between 1911 and 1926 and