Tamedy explores a forgotten trail of American history to find an intriguing tale of love, family and perseverance in the...
In her third novel, Tademy (Red River, 2007, etc.) draws a tale of courage and family loyalty from a dark corner of American history.
The young slave Tom is yatika—interpreter—for Alabama Creek chief Yargee, but he’s called Cow Tom for his gift of understanding, hilis haya, of cattle. As the Remove begins—Southern tribes being exiled to Indian Territory—Yargee rents Cow Tom to Gen. Thomas Jesup as a "linguister" to fight the Second Seminole War. War over, Cow Tom, his wife, Amy, and daughters Malinda and Maggie are caught up in a desperate river journey to Fort Gibson in eastern Oklahoma. Cow Tom's hard bargaining earns the family's freedom, but it's a long, hard struggle with prejudice before those with African-American blood are allowed into tribal roles. Tademy’s research lends veracity to the tale, which later shifts to the perspective of Rose, Cow Tom’s granddaughter. Prospering until the Civil War, the family is driven from their land by Confederate Lower Creeks. There’s only spare protection at Fort Gibson—"Surrounded by sickness and starvation and suffering." Recognizing "[t]he world was a harsh place, guaranteed of quicksilver change and backhand slaps," Cow Tom builds a new homestead and prospers, taking a role as chief among African Creeks. Rose marries a half-Indian cowboy and begins to ranch, struggling against her husband’s fickle regard for his vows and raising two of his children with other women as her own. Rose and Cow Tom drive the intense narrative, with Tademy’s knowledge of Creek life, from turban headgear to corn sofki to fermented cha-cha, offering authenticity. Tademy’s tale remains intense throughout, from the genocidal war in Florida—Tom, "not yet thirty, his life an endless trail of death patrols"—to the desperate struggle to hold onto property against prejudice—"We are Negro, and we are Creek, not one or the other but both."
Tamedy explores a forgotten trail of American history to find an intriguing tale of love, family and perseverance in the struggles of proud African Creeks.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 9781476753034
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's all quite entertaining and memorable.
Here, Follett sets the thrillers aside for a long, steady story about building a cathedral in 12th-century England.
Bloodthirsty or adventure-crazed Follett readers will be frustrated, but anyone who has ever been moved by the splendors of a fine church will sink right into this highly detailed but fast-moving historical work—a novel about the people and skills needed to put up an eye-popping cathedral in the very unsettled days just before the ascension of Henry II. The cathedral is the brainchild of Philip, prior of the monastery at Kingsbridge, and Tom, an itinerant master mason. Philip, shrewd and ambitious but genuinely devout, sees it as a sign of divine agreement when his decrepit old cathedral burns on the night that Tom and his starving family show up seeking shelter. Actually, it's Tom's clever stepson Jack who has stepped in to carry out God's will by secretly torching the cathedral attic, but the effect is the same. Tom gets the commission to start the rebuilding—which is what he has wanted to do more than anything in his life. Meanwhile, however, the work is complicated greatly by local politics. There is a loathsome baron and his family who have usurped the local earldom and allied themselves with the powerful, cynical bishop—who is himself sinfully jealous of Philip's cathedral. There are the dispossessed heirs to earldom, a beautiful girl and her bellicose brother, both sworn to root out the usurpers. And there is the mysterious Ellen, Tom's second wife, who witnessed an ancient treachery that haunts the bishop, the priory, and the vile would-be earl. The great work is set back, and Tom is killed in a raid by the rivals. It falls to young Jack to finish the work. Thriller writing turns out to be pretty good training, since Follett's history moves like a fast freight train. Details are plenty, but they support rather than smother.
It's all quite entertaining and memorable.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1989
ISBN: 0451225244
Page Count: 973
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1989
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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