Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. Clarke returns with a bittersweet slavery-era saga, partially set--like her smash 1999 Oprah-pick, River, Cross My Heart--in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown. On Ridley Plantation in rural Maryland, Gabriel Coats picks up his mother Annie's seamstress skills with remarkable ease, but is sold at age 10 to established Georgetown tailor Abraham Pearl. For eight years, Gabriel works hard and keeps an eye on freedom for his family as the Washington abolitionist movement gains momentum. Master Ridley's nephew Aaron begins overseeing the tailoring shop, and Gabriel and Annie busily create sartorial masterpieces as war steadily approaches. By the time freedom becomes a reality, only a few of the Coatses emerge with their pride and abilities intact. Clarke gets the details--emotional, political, domestic, religious--right across the board and crafts complex and appealing characters. Her knowledge of the period and the novel's dense, deliberate narrative create a poignant story about the intricacies of human bondage and its dissolution, built around a family's unshakable faith in one another. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
After her Oprah-pick debut (River, Cross My Heart, 1999), an African-American novelist delivers a compassionate portrait of the terrors and hopes of slaves. With its slightly clipped period language, coolly measured tone and rich supply of telling detail, Clarke's second novel delves into a compelling social panorama of black servitude in Washington, D.C., as the Civil War begins. The book's heart is the Coats family--Sewing Annie and her equally dexterous children, Gabriel and Ellen--initially bondspersons, then freed, around whom forms a circle of other black characters, some escaped, some raped and beaten, some passing as white. Their individual experiences include variously vicious, pragmatic or, very occasionally, kind owners, while beyond them the vast apparatus of slavery pulls in catchers, traders, auctioneers and members of the underground freedom network. Although the Coats family works hard at tailoring, sewing and knitting, trying to amass enough money to flee north to Canada--the opposite of being "sold south," the worst possible fate that could befall a slave--they also offer assistance to victims of savage abuse like Mary, who eventually becomes Gabriel's wife. The war further threatens the group, as owners attempt to reclaim freed slaves while "contrabands" (slaves following Union soldiers) flood the city which, now more than ever, is a heaving mass of soldiers, rats, disease, disorder and opportunism. The story winds through the war (with Gabriel fighting alongside the colored troops) to reach a sober conclusion that nevertheless heralds change. Clarke's sensitivity and her lyrical, earthy narration bring a freshness to the somber subject matter. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In this story of a slave family buying its freedom, Clarke illuminates and personalizes a dreadful part of our nation's past. Skilled needleworker Sewing Annie at Ridley Plantation in St. Mary's County, Maryland, trains her son, Gabriel, so well that at the age of 10, he's hired out to a tailor in Georgetown (also the site of Clarke's best-selling debut River, Cross My Heart, 1999). Gabriel is successful enough to buy manumission in 1854 for himself and his family, a bargain abrogated by crafty Jonathan Ridley in 1862 when District of Columbia slaves are decreed free with their owners eligible for compensation. Although the family, taking the surname Coats, no longer suffers the cruelty commonly meted out to persons considered the property of others, abject humiliation and threats to their liberty continue. Clarke laces the novel with details, including accounts of syndicates of African American laundry women and U.S. black troops, to the extent that plot becomes secondary. Although some incidents seem extraneous, and even primary characters are dispatched with unseemly haste, this is a vivid view of slavery.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
They've finally bought their freedom, but Sewing Annie Coats and son Gabriel find life in their new hometown pretty tough-especially with war approaching. A follow-up to River, Cross My Heart, Clarke's Oprah pick; reading group guide. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
