Come closer. This is not a story to go down easy, and the backwash still got hold of us today. The history of a family. The history of a country. From bondage to the joy of freedom…and then back into darkness, so fearsome that don't nobody want to talk about the scary time. 1873. Wasn't no riot like they say. It was a massacre...
-From Red River.
Hailed as "powerful," "accomplished," and "spellbinding," Lalita Tademy's first novel Cane River was a New York Times bestseller and the 2001 Oprah Book Club Summer Selection. Now with her evocative, luminous style and painstaking research, she takes her family's story even further, back to a little-chronicled, deliberately-forgotten time...and the struggle of three extraordinary generations of African-American men to forge brutal injustice and shattered promise into a limitless future for their children... Red River.
For the newly-freed black residents of Colfax, Louisiana, the beginning of Reconstruction promised them the right to vote, own property-and at last control their own lives.
Tademy saw a chance to start a school for his children and neighbors. His friend Israel Smith was determined to start a community business and gain economic freedom. But in the space of a day, marauding whites would "take back" Colfax in one of the deadliest cases of racial violence in the South. In the bitter aftermath, Sam and Israel's fight to recover and build their dreams will draw on the best they and their families have to give - and the worst they couldn't have foreseen. Sam's hidden resilience will make him an unexpected leader, even as it puts his conscience and life on the line. Israel finds ironic success - and the bitterest of betrayals. And their greatest challenge will be to pass on to their sons and grandsons a proud heritage never forgotten - and the strength to meet the demands of the past and future in their own unique ways.
An unforgettable achievement, a history brought to vibrant life through one of the most memorable families in fiction, Red River is about fathers and sons, husbands and wives-and the hopeful, heartbreaking choices we all must make to claim the legacy that is ours.
BOOK REVIEWS
BookBrowse
A gripping generational saga covering 60 years of Tademy's family's history up until the 1930s, as they struggle against poverty, racial attacks, and natural disasters to establish secure lives for themselves. Full Review (1042 words).
Media Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
The first half of the book sheds light on an overlooked event, and is rife with palpable tension, but the author tries to cram far too much history and family drama into the second half. What starts as a page-turner becomes an overblown saga.
Booklist - Vanessa Bush
Tademy brings drama and pathos to an epic account of her family history and a shameful account of our nation's history..[she] is establishing herself as a compelling chronicler of the complex history of slavery and race in America.
Library Journal
This engrossing and eyeopening emotional family saga spans several generations while bringing an African American perspective to a very painful time in U.S. history. Strongly recommended.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Combining family anecdotes with historical research and a rich imagination, Tademy crafts another American epic.
Historical Novels Review - Nancy J. Attwell
Editor's Choice. It is accomplishment enough to write a novel that so poignantly exposes the indignities endured by one group of people during one small period of history, but the author’s stunning achievement is to tell a story that, despite its specificity of time, place, and race, universalizes both the suffering and the sacrifice. More than a family saga, Red River is a clear glass that illuminates the misery of injustice and the magnificence of sacrifice, wherever they are found. Bravo!
The Scotsman - Chitira Ramaswarmy
Tademy's bold, controlled account of these horrific events never shies away from the gruesome facts, or becomes overwrought, which is a remarkable feat considering her emotional attachment to the story and its characters.
Sam and his magnificent wife Polly are the most well-drawn characters in a book which tends to become overcrowded with relatives ...... The same fate occasionally befalls Tademy's writing, which verges on clumsiness when it dips in and out of the African-American voice and a more neutral authorial style that just isn't as strong. Still, in such a powerful account of inequality, injustice, violence and grim determination, these are small concerns.
That Tademy has rewritten the history books and exposed the so-called "riot" for what it really was - the massacre of innocent black men by white men who acted with complete impunity - marks this out as a book of grave importance.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Honored in South Carolina Your Ancestors must be proud of you! I've read both of your books. I was taken back in history and gone the journey with you and yours. I have never heard of the "Massacre" until I picked up Red River. Your books should be on everyone's personal bookshelf. I will share these with... Read More
War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that AS Byatt weaves into this most timely of books. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark.
A beguiling, imaginative, inspiring story about the bigness of being alive as an individual, as a member of a tribe, and as a participant in history, exploring how we use storytelling to survive and shape our own truths.
Brilliantly evoking the long-vanished world of masters and servants, Margaret Powell's classic memoir of her time in service is the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman who, though she served in the great houses of England, never stopped aiming high.
Vivid, daring, and unforgettable, The Printmaker's Daughter shines fresh light on art, loyalty, and the tender and indelible bond between a father and daughter.
I read The Healing in two sittings it is a fascinating story of plantation life at the beginning of the Civil War. Granada, a slave newborn child...
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The Uncommon Reader is a novella by novelist and playwright, Alan Bennett. The story starts with the Queen coming across the mobile library van...
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Arizona bills Amazon for $53 million in uncollected sales tax(Feb 06 2012) The ongoing sales tax battle between many US states and large online retailers, most notably Amazon, continues with a thrust from Arizona which, last week,...
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Amazon rumored to be opening bricks and mortar stores(Feb 03 2012) There are mumblings in the blogosphere that Amazon is to open bricks and mortar stores. Launch.it offers four possible scenarios:
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Kirkus Reviews
of 5
by Honored in South Carolina
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