Description:
A sweeping, eerily resonant epic of race and violence in the Jim Crow South: a
lyrical and emotionally devastating masterpiece from Charlie Smith, whom the
New York Public Library has said “may be America’s most bewitching stylist
alive”
Delvin Walker is just a boy when his mother flees their home in the Red Row section of Chattanooga, accused of killing a white man. Taken in by Cornelius Oliver, proprietor of the town’s leading Negro funeral home, he discovers the art of caring for the aggrieved, the promise of transcendence in the written word, and a rare peace in a hostile world. Yet tragedy visits them near-daily, and after a series of devastating events—a lynching, a church burning—Delvin fears being accused of murdering a local white boy and leaves town.
Haunted by his mother’s disappearance, Delvin rides the rails, meets fellow travelers, falls in love, and sees an America sliding into the Great Depression. But before his hopes for life and love can be realized, he and a group of other young men are falsely charged with the rape of two white women, and shackled to a system of enslavement masquerading as justice. As he is pushed deeper into the darkness of imprisonment, his resolve to escape burns only more brightly, until in a last spasm of flight, in a white heat of terror, he is called to choose his fate.
In language both intimate and lyrical, novelist and poet Charlie Smith conjures a fresh and complex portrait of the South of the 1920s and ’30s in all its brutal humanity—and the astonishing endurance of one battered young man, his consciousness “an accumulation of breached and disordered living . . . hopes packed hard into sprung joints,” who lives past and through it all.
Delvin Walker is just a boy when his mother flees their home in the Red Row section of Chattanooga, accused of killing a white man. Taken in by Cornelius Oliver, proprietor of the town’s leading Negro funeral home, he discovers the art of caring for the aggrieved, the promise of transcendence in the written word, and a rare peace in a hostile world. Yet tragedy visits them near-daily, and after a series of devastating events—a lynching, a church burning—Delvin fears being accused of murdering a local white boy and leaves town.
Haunted by his mother’s disappearance, Delvin rides the rails, meets fellow travelers, falls in love, and sees an America sliding into the Great Depression. But before his hopes for life and love can be realized, he and a group of other young men are falsely charged with the rape of two white women, and shackled to a system of enslavement masquerading as justice. As he is pushed deeper into the darkness of imprisonment, his resolve to escape burns only more brightly, until in a last spasm of flight, in a white heat of terror, he is called to choose his fate.
In language both intimate and lyrical, novelist and poet Charlie Smith conjures a fresh and complex portrait of the South of the 1920s and ’30s in all its brutal humanity—and the astonishing endurance of one battered young man, his consciousness “an accumulation of breached and disordered living . . . hopes packed hard into sprung joints,” who lives past and through it all.
I really liked this book. It describes the Jim Crow South in a way that
I haven’t really read about in recently published books. We follow Delvin from his dramatic earthly
entrance throughout his life and the hardships he faces.
Sometimes the writing is gory. It shares the truth. There really isn’t any covering up the
horrors that people did to other people just because of skin color. And I mean Delvin does spend time living with
an undertaker so there are some details that are a little icky.
My biggest complaint is the wordiness. It did
give the reader a very clear vision and would make for a lovely movie, but as a
book it could have eliminated a few pages.
I always find I prefer less is more when it comes to descriptive
writing. And I do admit to doing a
little skimming at various wordy parts.
Verdict
- If you are interested in the Jim Crow South and enjoy reading about
Depression era travels check it out. If
you need something light, stay away. I
do think it is worth a read, wordiness and all.
I received this book to read for review from TLC Book Tours but all
thoughts and opinions are my own.
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