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Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. ( Apr. ) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A white slave in post-Civil War America: that's the hook for this semi-autobiographical fiction. Brady has already written a novel (The Impostor, 1979) and an autobiography (The Unmaking of a Dancer, 1982); here, she reconstructs a life of her grandfather, the slave. Jonathan Carrick was a so-called ``boughten boy,'' purchased at age four for farmwork; he ran away at 16; four of his children would commit suicide. What interests Brady is identity. How is it formed if you are a solitary slave-child? Mulling over the question are narrator/granddaughter Malory Carrick and her uncle Atlas, a son of slave Jonathan. Sequences from Jonathan's life (slaving on a Kansas tobacco farm; riding the railroads, free at last, as a brakeman) are interrupted by discussions between niece and uncle (Atlas has his memories; Malory has been reading the coded diaries) about the meaning of Jonathan's life (the reader becomes a student at an offbeat seminar). Malory sees her grandfather's life fueled (and corroded) by hatred, not for slavemaster Alvah Stoke so much as for Stoke's son George, Jonathan's vicious tormentor. The slave is a model soldier in his war against George, striking opportunely, beating him until he is surely dead, then escaping. Twenty years later, a newly ordained minister, he will lose his religious faith when he discovers that George is alive and flourishing, a US senator; it's war again. Jonathan does get a life (he marries, has children, becomes a successful farmer, albeit a lousy husband and father), but his rage never subsides, returning him to the battlefield for a final confrontation with the Senator when both are old men. There are problems here: awkward format, awkward fact/fiction straddle, overworked war analogy, hokey showdown. Yet this deliberately rough-edged work does command respect for its blistering anger at the poison of slavery in the bloodstream of the Carricks...and America.
Booklist Review
The narrator of this true-to-life novel is the granddaughter of a slave. She is not, as we might expect, a black American. She is white, and her grandfather was white. But there are universal truths revealed about humanity wherever slavery exists, black or white, and that is the message here. This is the story of Jonathan Carrick, sold at the age of four to a Kansas farmer for the sum of $15. Johnny is beaten, worked like a pack mule, and treated no better than the pigs. From this he learns to hate, but it is against George Stokes, his master's son, a boy about Johnny's age, that he must go to war. Desperate to win his father's approval, George is consumed with jealousy over this "boughten boy"--his stoicism and his ever-apparent value to George's father. George torments and humiliates Johnny from his position of power, but, as in most wars, the balance of power can shift. As a free man, and at the end of his life, Johnny gets his revenge, but not before his hatred has destroyed his soul. Brady is herself the granddaughter of a slave, and this story is her attempt to understand what her grandfather suffered and the legacy of anger his descendants cope with today. An unforgettable look at the inhumanity of oppression, and at the awesome fortitude of the will to survive. --Kerri Kilbane
Library Journal Review
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. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
