Yaa Gyasi, born in Ghana but raised from 9 years old to adulthood in Alabama, intended for her first book to be about mothers and daughters, based in the central region of Ghana where her mother was raised.

She visited Ghana after her sophomore year at Stanford University to do her research. On a whim, she and a friend decided to visit Cape Coast Castle, a fortress and British trade headquarters where slave traders once imprisoned people in a dungeon, herded them onto boats and sold them as if they were cattle.

"As soon as I walked in I was just struck by the feeling of it being haunted," Gyasi said in a phone interview from her home in Berkeley, Calif. "So many people had walked through there and died there."

While on the tour, her guide talked about how British soldiers used to marry the local women, something Gyasi had never heard before. It was then she decided that dichotomy would be the basis of her work.

"That visit to the castle really just changed the course of the entire project, and subsequently, my life, I think," she said.

The book, "Homegoing" became a tale of two sisters, one sold from the dungeon of Cape Coast Castle, the other living in comfort in the halls above, married to a British soldier. It follows the sisters and their descendants through eight generations and describes how the legacy of slavery affected their two families.

The debut novel for this now 27-year-old sold to publisher Alfred A. Knopf for $1 million, and this summer climbed as high as No. 15 on the New York Times' Best Seller List.

Here's what The Times had to say about Gyasi's work:

"It's impossible not to admire the ambition and scope of "Homegoing," and thanks to Ms. Gyasi's instinctive storytelling gifts, the book leaves the reader with a visceral understanding of both the savage realities of slavery and the emotional damage that is handed down, over the centuries, from mothers to daughters, fathers to sons. At its best, the novel makes us experience the horrors of slavery on an intimate, personal level; by its conclusion, the characters' tales of loss and resilience have acquired an inexorable and cumulative emotional weight."

Gyasi was born in Ghana, but at the age of 2 moved with her family to Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee and then in 1999 to Huntsville, where her father, Kwaku Gyasi, is a French professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

She graduated from Grissom High School in 2007, then from Stanford and the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Her mother, Sophia Gyasi, a registered nurse at HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital in Huntsville, thought Yaa might become a doctor. But writing was in her soul.

"As a matter of fact, she submitted her first story to the Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Competition when she was 7 years old," Sophia Gyasi said. "She received a Certificate of Achievement signed by actor Levar Burton."

That certificate of achievement spawned a writer whose novel is now being compared to "Roots."

She's been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and reviewed by just about every major news outlet.

"Growing up, one of the things I found most difficult was trying to figure out where I fit in, particularly because while my family is black, obviously we aren't African-American," she told the Wall Street Journal. "And because I grew up in predominantly white spaces, I think it could be difficult to figure out how to navigate America's racial tension."

Gyasi said she had great experiences growing up in high-tech Huntsville, particularly being part of the university culture that came with being a UAH professor's daughter. But, she said, she "wasn't impervious" to the realities of being black in Alabama.

On Aug. 16 she was on 'The Daily Show' with Trevor Noah, where she talked about how growing up in Alabama inspired her to delve into the topic of race.

"In Alabama you are constantly confronted with your race," she said. "It became the starting point for me for all the ways I could write about race and ethnicity that came up in the book."

She also talked about what surprised her most, and most people don't realize, that some Africans were complicit in the slave trade.

"If you want to paint the full picture of the slave trade, you have to include the African side of it," she told Noah.

Gyasi, who like many writers had resigned herself to being a starving artist, is now living the whirlwind life of a best-selling author.

"It's really kind of beyond my wildest dreams," she said.

She will be home Nov. 1 to do a book signing at UAH, where her father still teaches.

She said she's excited to get a chance to be with her family, and see her best friend from high school, who still lives in Huntsville.

So what's next for this now famous author? We'll have to wait and see.

"I started a second book before all of this took off, so I'll have something to return to once things calm down."

Haskins takes a weekly look at points of pride statewide. Email your suggestions to shaskins@al.com, or tweet them to @Shelly_Haskins using #AlabamaProud