From Publishers Weekly
Mallory Carrick, the narrator of this provocative, ambitious novel by the author of The Imposter , is the granddaughter of a white slave. Jonathan Carrick was "bound out" to a farmer as a boy in 1865; though he ran away at age 16, his enslavement instilled a fury that, Mallory states, "pollutes my life, even though the man was dead before I was born." Desperate to understand her fierce, emotionally crippled ancestor, she flies from her home in England to Washington state, where her great-uncle recounts the story of Jonathan's life: his horrific boyhood, his years as a railroad brakeman, his conflict as a fundamentalist minister who doubted the Word he preached, his war against the imperious son of his erstwhile owner. Confined to a wheelchair by a spinal tumor, Mallory seeks "the truth" about her grandfather but must rely on such fallible sources as her alcoholic great-uncle's failing memory and Jonathan's coded journals. Drawing on the actual experiences of her own grandfather, Brady brings a riveting tale shockingly to life with her flair for colorful characterization and vivid language. However, her tendency to indulge in philosophical musings overwhelms a story that would have been far more powerful and unsettling if it had been more simply told. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
In 1865, a Civil War veteran indentures his four-year-old son to a vicious Kansas tobacco farmer. The boy, who is white and Brady's grandfather, is fictionalized in a remarkably compelling tale that essentially draws its power from depicting unembellished brutality. Brady's narrative cuts between protagonist Jonathan Carrick's doomed attempts at love and normalcy and those of a son and granddaughter, reminiscing survivors who can only be termed "adult children of slaves." In the 60 years the protagonist's story spans, Johnny, intense and generally enraged, circuits the country, murdering, praying, drinking, and blaspheming, often simultaneously. The characters in this dark tale, cynics every one, alternately ponder the biggest of questions and submit, inarticulately, to unbearable pain. This graphic, ugly-beautiful novel, as eloquent for its articulation of obsessive rage as for its avoidance of melodrama and cliche, is recommended for libraries collecting serious contemporary fiction. BOMC alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/92.
- Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., Pa.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
