Where is Zora Neale Hurston?

Alice Walker discovers Zora Neale Hurston and is captivated by her amazing writing skills and the life she has lived through her autobiography. Alice decides she wants to know everything there is to know about her, she even goes as far as telling people that she is her niece to get information. She starts by visiting her hometown of Eatonville and feels like she knows it from everything she has read. She talks to a women in town to see if she knows anything and the lady tells her she died of malnutrition and is in an unmarked grave. She wants to know if there is anyone in town who knew Zora and might still be alive. She is exuberant when she finds out that one lady, though old now, did grow up with Zora. When she gets the information the woman who knew Zora is willing to tell her she goes on a search to find her grave.

Searching for Zora's grave gives Alice mixed emotions, she wants to find Zora, but she is mad and upset that she can not honor her the way that she deserves to be honored. She does buy a tombstone with the money that she does have so that there is a marking, at the least, to show that there is greatness buried in that spot. Alice and her partner know of a doctor that knew Zora very well when she was alive, so they go to him to see if he would tell them anything, since he might not believe the niece lie. He tells them a lot about Zora, how she loved to eat, and how amazing her English was, which she thinks is him trying to tell her that she didn't use the common "black" dialogue found in her novel's. And many other things, one of which is where she used to live and the fact that she did not die of malnutrition, but of a stroke. Everything he tells her she takes her own way, she now wants to go see where Zora lived since she missed her flight and asked the man that knew her there if she like flowers of all things.

Alice Walkers quest to find Zora made her think of the way things were in the past and why so many people back then didn't like the way Zora Neale Hurston wrote, while today she is an acclaimed writer. It could be argued that the quest was as much to find Alice as it was to find Zora.