Reading guide for Black Cloud Rising by David Wright Falade

Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Black Cloud Rising begins with a childhood flashback that introduces us to the tangled web of power and family dynamics that will play out between Richard, Patrick, and John B. over the rest of the novel. Discuss these. What details does Faladé use to highlight these complicated relationships?
2. White supremacy and military rank aren't the only hierarchies that Richard and his fellow troopers are forced to navigate in Black Cloud Rising. What other systems are imposed on them? What lines do they draw to unite or divide themselves? How and why do they cross those lines?
3. When describing white attitudes about the recruitment of Black soldiers, Richard dismisses Northern paternalism and Southern horror as "but different sides of the same coin" and "bunkum for self-interested purpose." At the same time, he praises General Wild for his similarly dehumanizing appraisal of men like him as "pure terror. Just that" (p. 17). Why do you think this is?
4. In describing his dream-memory about telling John B. of his enlistment in the Union Army, Richard has trouble keeping track of what parts of the scene actually happened, asking: "Was this truly said, any more than the part about the ornamented gum tree?" (p. 27). Which parts of his dream do you trust? Which parts feel like inventions or intrusions of camp life into his sleep?
5. The soldiers in Richard's regiment face more than just their counterparts on the battlefield—their first casualty, Robert Hunter, is bitten by a rattlesnake. What other enemies and dangers are they up against? In what ways, effective or not, do they fight those battles?
6. Whether through Richard's interaction with the pro-Union, slave-owning cousin of John B. or his protracted conflict with Revere, Faladé repeatedly shows how the North-South division of the Civil War actually consists of a complex patchwork of factions, loyalties, and personal connections. Why do you think he emphasizes these internal fault lines? Did this subvert your expectations for how the plot of the novel would unfold?
7. Shortly after he is reunited with Fanny, Richard thinks, "instead of fighting for the idea of her, here she now was, close enough to touch" (p. 125). How is Richard's mental image of Fanny and his duty as a soldier challenged by her arrival as a flesh-and-blood person? How does Fanny deal with being idealized by him?
8. Why do you think Faladé largely emphasizes the daily lives of these soldiers rather than the battles they fight? Were you surprised at the amount and types of interaction they have with the local population?
9. Early in the novel Richard says that he is fighting "for my right to prerogate claims to home" (p. 12) but immediately before his first battle he finds himself acutely motivated by the desire to prove himself to Revere, having been called "unfit to lead in front of my men" (p. 190). Why do you think saving face in front of Revere matters so much to Richard? How does this connect to the larger themes of the novel?
10. After the successful ambush outside the Church the men and officers celebrate by singing together, with "even Backuss's lips moving heartily" (p. 202). Do you think this marks a real bond forming between the two groups or is this an expression of a temporary burst of feeling?
11. When Richard catches Patrick in the pocosin he has no shortage of reasons to arrest him. It's his military duty to bring guerrilla fighters in. He isn't sure that Patrick hadn't been involved in the lynching of the family earlier that day. He doesn't know for certain if Patrick had shot at him moments before. The encounter even prompted Richard to recognize that he'd "been blind my own damn self" (p. 229) regarding his discomfiting similarities to John B. So why does he let Patrick go?
12. While early in the book Richard relishes being seen by Wild more as an instrument of war than as an individual, later on he is dismayed that despite having met several times the general still has trouble recognizing him, let alone seeing him as a person distinct from their larger cause. Draper is the only white character who truly seems capable of seeing Richard—"Not Sergeant Etheridge, his boy Friday, but me, a man, and fully so—as big and broad and rich of substance as he understood himself to be" (p. 249). What do you think allows Draper to have this clarity? Discuss what you think it means that Richard describes this moment as raising "a sense of alarm in me, even as it felt freeing" (p. 249).
13. While shots don't end up being fired between them, one of the largest-scale military conflicts in Black Cloud Rising is the standoff with the Union soldiers of the Ninety-Eighth. Why do you think Faladé chooses this as the closing scene of the main arc of the novel while the rest of the war is summarized in the Afterword?
14. When the war ends, Richard returns to the largely unchanged Sand Banks and builds a life for himself—though one that he is conflicted about and feels the need to defend, saying "I made money, good money, and I gained standing in the Banks. I was an American, by God—all of us former colored troopers were ... Why should I not have taken the utmost advantage?" (p. 282). What do you think of the decisions and compromises he makes? Why do you think he makes them?
15. How do you interpret Revere's parting words to Richard on the last page of the novel? Richard describes them as bone-deep truth, but remarks that he himself "seemed capable only of seeking truth elsewhere" (p. 290). Why do you think this is? Does this last scene and chapter change your interpretation of the novel's earlier events?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Grove Press. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.