WHEN SOUNDS COLLIDE

Love springs eternal in Hampton’s 19th-century historical romance set in the antebellum American South.

Sarah Tennison, a 10-year-old whitegirl in North Carolina in the 1870s,forms a connection with Custis,a Black child her age who narrowly escapes a near-fatal beating by three white boys. Sarah’s father decides to risk sheltering Custis at his sprawling, 1,032-acre farm, where the boy’s inner resilience—“You have the courage of three grown men,” marvels the doctor treating him—and intellect can flourish, at least for a time. Over several years, Custis studies science as an escape from his troubles, as his fascination with atoms might attest (“They’re free, and can go anywhere”). Yet the limitations that society places on him, and on Sarah, continually assert themselves. Later, Sarah can’t find a university that will admit women, dashing her dreams of a career in veterinary medicine, nor can Custis pursue his own vision of creating a machine that “opens up the entire body, so to speak, all without incision.” Undeterred, Custis hatches a daring and undeniably dangerous plan to travel to New York City, where one college, Centennial, “has the laboratory I need,” he tells Sarah; as adults, the pair’s relationship has become romantic. It will require him, the son of a man who was enslaved, to reinvent himself as a Greek professor, Renauldos Custis, and send for her, once the time is right. Over the course of this wide-ranging historical novel, Hampton’s portrayal of how Custis pursues his plan is sure to sweep the reader along. The author’s prose style is full-throated and emotional throughout: “This is the only way we can have it all….I can no longer hide my love for you. I want to scream out loud that I’m in love with you. But I can’t tell anyone.” Also, although it seems so very long ago, readers will find aspects of the setting to be familiar and relatable.

A richly textured, finely detailed novel about a young man and woman fighting against challenges to their love.