Before she was the guidance counselor on “Room 222,” before the Golden Globe nominations and the NAACP Image Awards, Denise Nicholas was a 19-year-old touring Mississippi with a civil rights theater troupe, staying in the home of Fannie Lou Hamer, taking in her host’s bullet-riddled walls.
That was 1964. Nicholas is 81 now, and she has finally written it all down.
Her memoir, “Finding Home,” published in November by Agate Bolden, spans six decades of American life lived in the spotlight and the shadows. It moves from 1950s Detroit to Freedom Summer Mississippi to the ABC soundstages where she played Liz McIntyre, the wise and beautiful counselor who helped make “Room 222” the first network series to feature two Black actors in starring roles.
But at the center of the book, Nicholas has placed something she’s never publicly discussed at length: the 1980 murder of her younger sister Michele, a crime that remains unsolved.
On Tuesday at 7 p.m., Nicholas will discuss the memoir at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., in conversation with Ed Boyer, a veteran journalist who spent 20 years at the Los Angeles Times and worked on teams that won three Pulitzer Prizes.
National Book Award winner James McBride has called the memoir proof that Nicholas “is also a writer of deep talent and understated eloquence.” Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts Jr. writes that it’s “the often incredible story of one woman’s lifelong search for self—for who and what she is, in a family that has denied her knowledge of both.”
Nicholas earned three consecutive Golden Globe nominations for her role on “Room 222,” which aired from 1969 to 1974 and won the Emmy for Outstanding New Series in 1970. She later co-starred as Councilwoman Harriet DeLong on “In the Heat of the Night” from 1988 to 1995, writing six episodes of that series. In 2005, she published her first novel, “Freshwater Road,” drawing on her civil rights experiences; The Washington Post called it “surely the best work of fiction about the civil rights movement since Ernest J. Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.”
The memoir, her second book, explores what her fiction could not: her three marriages, including to soul singer Bill Withers; her family’s secrets; and the grief that has shaped her.
Vroman’s, founded in 1894, is the oldest independent bookstore in Southern California and hosts more than 400 author events each year. The store was named Bookseller of the Year by Publishers Weekly in 2008.
“Finding Home: A Memoir” is available in hardcover for $30.
For information: 626-449-5320 or vromansbookstore.com.
Nicholas, who lives in Los Angeles, earned her bachelor’s degree in drama from USC in 1987, two decades after her television career began. She has won three NAACP Image Awards.
Author Tayari Jones has written of the memoir: “Following the light that shines through the cracks, she discovers poetry among the wreckage. Finding Home is a beautiful, breathtaking work of art.”
Denise Nicholas Book Signing and Discussion: Actress and author Denise Nicholas discusses and signs her new memoir, “Finding Home,” in conversation with veteran journalist Ed Boyer. Tuesday, January 13, 2026, at 7 p.m. Admission is free; a purchase of the book from Vroman’s is appreciated. Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Parking is available in nearby parking lot in rear. For more information, call 626-449-5320 or visit vromansbookstore.com.
