Review: Redemption on the River by Loren DeShon

Redemption on the River is a first novel by author Loren DeShon.  It’s got some weaknesses but overall I enjoyed it.  It takes place along the Mississippi River from Missouri to New Orleans in 1848.

This is one of those historical novels that really tries to expose you to details you might not have known about – the story describes life on a steamboat, gambling, and the Underground Railroad, and includes a number of not-so-well-known historical figures on the 1800’s South.  DeShon does a nice job of creating atmosphere and setting, as well as a compelling story.

Silas Jacobson lives on a family farm in Missouri when he accidentally causes the death of his father.  He signs over his rights to the farm to his younger brother and sister and heads out without any kind of plan.  Silas’ life changes when he meets a woman whose family is helping slaves escape on the Underground Railroad.

Silas isn’t the most relatable character for most readers – he makes a lot of poor decisions, he’s not book smart, and he loves to punch people.  He’s kind of a guy’s guy.  He has no trouble having sex with prostitutes or drinking away whatever money is in his pocket, and he also has no trouble floating up and down the river doing odd jobs while his brother and sister manage the family farm.

But I do like a main character who isn’t perfect and Silas learns a lot during the course of this book.   He starts out knowing that his father didn’t support slavery but really has no idea what it means to enslave other human beings until he sees it for himself.   And even then he has to learn how to stand up for what’s right and have a real impact, rather than taking impulsive risks.

DeShon imparts a ton of historical detail while also telling a fast-moving, entertaining story.   I liked how the book gave me a good idea of how the Underground Railroad actually worked, as opposed to just knowing what it is.

I occasionally found myself wishing that the story was told from Hannah’s point of view because as a character she’s so much more interesting, and this book is really her story.  Unfortunately, seen through the eyes of Silas she’s somewhat one-dimensional.

The dialogue in the book was not as well-written as the description.  I often found the conversations between the characters a little stilted.  There was something distracting about it that kept me from fully enjoying the book.  For example, Silas’ conversations with Hannah mostly consist of her yelling at him about slavery issues.  His conversations with his siblings seemed forced.  When dialogue is well-written, you don’t notice it, and in this book I did.  I can’t explain why exactly.

I found that the author’s description of the book on Amazon didn’t match my view of the book.  It’s described as:

Silas Jacobson pulled a trigger, killed his father, and ended up months later face down in Memphis mud, trying to forget the girl who betrayed him. He buries his father on the farm, his guilt in himself and leaves home seeking to forget past mistakes. He travels on Mississippi steamboats and meets his best friend in a brawl, his worst enemy in a cathouse, and a mentor and lover at a New Orleans faro table. Fighting, fornicating, and cheating at cards are a grand time, but there’s another woman, a girl on a mission of her own, who saves his life and offers the opportunity to redeem himself. Silas staggers out of the mud to go to her, but he finds that she’s deceived him from the start. He’ll risk his neck for her—he owes her that much—but love is no longer possible. His shot at redemption comes down to his conscience, the two women, a poker game, and the turn of a card. Redemption on the River is historical fiction set along the Mississippi River in 1848.

Rather than a book about a woman’s betrayal, I’d describe it more as a story about a young man coming to terms with the realities of slavery and what it means to be a principled human being.  I liked that Silas’ “redemption” was truly a gradual process; he falls, gets back up, falls again, but learns a little each time.

All in all, a book worth reading for its history and drama, and a nice first novel by DeShon.

Review: The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

I have mixed feelings about this book.  On the one hand, I flew through it, which I didn’t really expect with a book about colonial Virginia and slavery.  It’s a fast-moving story even though it spans years.

But I have to say, something about the writing fizzled for me by the end.  The first half of the book is really character-rich.  Light on action, but heavy on relationships and personal growth.  Then the main character becomes an adult, and I felt much of that was lost.

The story centers around Lavinia, a seven-year-old girl who comes to a Virginia plantation as an indentured servant in the 1790s.  Lavinia is an Irish immigrant whose parents died during the ship voyage.  When the ship docks in Virginia, her older brother is sold to another family, and Lavinia comes home with the Captain.

In many ways, Lavinia is fortunate. She works hard as a servant but is never mistreated.  She’s adopted by the family of slaves that work in the Big House and the Kitchen House — Mama Mae, Papa George, Belle, Dory, Ben, and twins Beattie and Fanny, who are Lavinia’s age.  Lavinia grows up as a servant but is fairly ignorant of the differences between the races.   Her slave “family” loves her and cares for her.

At the same time, the lives of the slaves are complicated by the Captain’s frequent absences, his wife Martha’s dependency on laudanum, and the violent and racist overseer Rankin.  The slaves understand what Lavinia does not — that they cannot depend on the Captain or Martha for humane treatment.  They can be beaten, raped, sold, or tortured at any time.  The Captain and Martha may be on the humane side as far as slave-owners go, but in a conflict between the slaves and a white person, the white person will win.  This makes the slaves’ relationships both precarious and precious — children die often and slaves can be sold or kept apart at the will of their owners.  Mama teaches her children to ingratiate themselves with the Captain and his wife just to survive and stay together.

The story is told primarily from Lavinia’s perspective, but Grissom tells some of the story from Belle’s view.  Belle is an attractive young slave who works in the Kitchen House and is sort of a mother to Lavinia.  Belle illustrates the vulnerability and powerlessness of the life of a female slave.  Belle loves Ben, one of the slaves, but can’t be with him.  She’s actually the daughter of the captain, and he won’t stand for her being with anyone else. As a slave she is subject to rape, unwanted pregnancy, and has no say in her own relationships.  In fact, Ben is likely to be killed just for being near her.  The slaves live at the edge of violence and death all the time.

The use of two narrators is important because Lavinia is kept in the dark about a lot of things.  Being white in a black family only makes her feel alone and separate — she has no friends who are white, and doesn’t like to be treated differently from her black family.  You understand that she’s being naive when she wishes to be black, but her wish is understandable.  As a reader you know that as she grows, her life will be further wrenched from the family she loves, and you feel for her.

Grissom does a great job creating relationships among the family members, getting into the heads of her two narrators.  I think her dialogue was a strong point, especially the dialect used by the slaves.  Dialect is always a clear indicator of status and education.  I liked Grissom’s emphasis on names to differentiates character’s roles and how they are seen by others.  For example, Lavinia is ‘Abinia to the slave adults, and “Binny” to some of the children.  She calls Mae “Mama” and George “Papa” but when she returns to the plantation as an adult she’s forbidden to call them that.

Grissom also takes care in describing the home life of the slaves and white family on the plantation.  The lives of the slaves center around their roles in the kitchen house and the “big house”.  There  is little political detail, but she explains that the plantation is in Southern Virginia, far from any cities.  I do wish there was more historical detail throughout the book, but that’s just my preference with a historical novel. For example, I would have liked to know more about perceptions about Irish immigrants at this time, or what it meant in society for someone to be an indentured servant.  Lavinia’s ability to mingle with the upper classes seemed a little suspect to be me, but I don’t know.

As a girl Lavinia is kind, loving, and sensitive, but as an adult she is a disappointment.  I can’t decide if this is intentional on the part of the author, or if I just feel disappointed in the writing.  Lavinia as a young adult receives education, status, and love, just because she’s white.  But instead of doing something with her privileges she becomes self-centered and weak.  As an adult she should understand the world around her much better than she does.  I understand that the slaves try to hide from her the most horrible aspects of their lives, but still, she lives with them and should at least question things more.  Instead she makes foolish assumptions and bad decisions.  She sees everything in terms of herself and her needs, even when her former family needs her the most.  In fact they end up protecting and sheltering her at the risk of their own lives. I understand that as a woman she’s mostly powerless, but at some point she loses my sympathy.

I also felt that the scenes toward the end of the book felt a little forced, like the writer needed a bunch of action and a plot device to tie things together.

For a first novel, this one has some faults but it was also a really interesting read with vivid characters and one that really drew me into the lives of the characters. As a Virginia resident and a frequent visitor to Williamsburg, I enjoyed reading about my state and this time in its history.   The book is at times troubling and violent, but all with a purpose.  I just think the last third could have been stronger, and I wish that Lavinia as a character had been stronger.

Review: Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende

I love Isabel Allende’s books, and so was excited to read this latest, especially as the Haitian revolution is a fascinating topic.  I was also a little nervous because the Haitian revolution is extremely violent by all accounts, both in the treatment of slaves and in the slaves’ violent uprising against the whites.  One thing I appreciated about this book was that the violence, while not minimized, was also not so graphic as to be too disturbing (contrast with the well-written but graphic All Soul’s Rising by Madison Smartt Bell, which has images I have never gotten out of my head).

Overall I was disappointed.  It seemed like a good historical depiction of the slave revolt, but didn’t cover the complexity of the larger revolution adequately.  Allende draws the important parallels, between the French revolution, the slave trade in the US and Europe, and military conflicts between France, Spain and Britain that all led to the creation of an independent Haiti.  However, she doesn’t really see the story through, covering about half the chronology from uprising (1791) to Haitian independence (1804). At one point she shifts the story from Haiti to the US, and I felt like I was being taken away from the real story.

My biggest problem was with the main character, Tete, who is a slave purchased at the beginning of the book as a young girl, to tend to the mistress of a plantation owned by Toulouse Valmorain.  I just never come to feel anything for this character, and she never becomes someone whose outcome I’m interested in.  I had a hard time understanding her motivations, which always center around the children in the story (some hers and some not) – she gives up love, passion, freedom, multiple times in the name of these children.  Children she will never be allowed to claim or raise. I realize that if I was a parent I might feel differently – but I couldn’t help but feel that I might have rejected some or all of these children at some point in her story, or at least thought hard about it.

Tete is interesting in one aspect – her character is shaped by being born into slavery, so perhaps her character, which I feel is dispassionate and overly practical, should be viewed with that lens.  She can’t make decisions for herself because she has never been given that ability.  She resents her treatment by the master but has been conditioned her entire life to accept it.  She has been raised to serve others and that is what she does.  And yet the trouble with that is that she fails to grow as an individual.

Valmorain is an interesting character because of his moral ambiguity – he dislikes the torture and starvation of slaves but doesn’t have any problem with the ownership of slaves.  Also, while he rejects physical cruelty, he never recognizes the cruelty of  his rape of female slaves, or the selling of their children.

One point was illuminating for me about the history of slavery in Haiti and the US.  At one point Valmorain realizes that the price of the slaves, which is much higher in the US than in Haiti, actually influences the treatment of the slaves.  In Haiti, slaves cost so little that it’s more cost-efficient to work them to death than to feed and care for them.  It is interesting to think about the excessive cruelty to slaves in Haiti, which ultimately leads to their freedom, as being influenced not just by human morality but by economics.  (And yet, George Bernard Shaw said the same thing – when we give the poor just a little to live on, they have something to lose and it keeps them obedient.  Give the poor nothing, as the French did, and you have revolution.)

Finally, the storyline with Valmorain’s son and daughter at the end was not believable and too disjointed from the historical plot.  As I said in the beginning of the review, the Haitian revolution consists of years of complex, multi-country, multi-ethnic struggles that would be hard to adequately portray in any book.  Allende, by diverging into a fairly strange personal story at the end, gives short shrift to the conflict she is writing about.