An often engaging look into the complex history of the American South.
Flowers bloom and families split apart in this sequel to Muriel’s historical fiction debut.
The characters of pre–American Civil War era Essie’s Roses are back in Westland, an Alabama plantation where the “willows hold secrets, until the night air sweeps through their leaves, scattering them in the wind and into our ears.” In Muriel’s debut novel, Katie, the White heiress to Westland, saw an unlikely friendship blossom between her daughter Evie and a formerly enslaved Black woman, Essie Mae, at the outbreak of the American Civil War. This book opens with Evie and Essie Mae returning home after Katie’s death from illness. In post–Civil War Alabama, they deal with past traumas involving racist and gendered violence. They try to revive friendships and dreams while still protecting Westland from those who would burn it down. Threatening letters sent to Evie’s stepfather, James, lead the two women to try to unravel the tangled threads of their past. The novel explores themes of forgiveness, freedom, and found families through the voices of diverse women: Katie, Evie, Essie Mae, and Black matriarch and housekeeper Delly. The multiple perspectives put the focus on what is perhaps the novel’s most complex character—Westland itself—and its essential nature. Questions of what it means to be free and independent as a woman, and especially as a Black woman, are addressed with nuance and care through Evie’s and Essie Mae’s voices. Yet despite the careful worldbuilding, the author is prone to occasional anachronisms; for example, a character uses the term “dissociative identity disorder,” coined in 1994, in the novel’s late-1800s setting. Roses are used throughout as clichéd metaphors: “its distracting blossom makes you forget it sprouts thorns, that when touched, prick the skin.” However, the plot is skillfully structured, with dramatic truths revealed unexpectedly.
An often engaging look into the complex history of the American South.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9909383-6-1
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Little Cabin Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even the Loch Ness monster makes an appearance in this kaleidoscopic epic with deep roots in both history and myth.
The third book in a series set in sixth-century Celtic Britain puts powerful women in the foreground of an ensemble including the historical characters of Merlin and Arthur.
“After the Battle of the Caledonian Wood, as our celebration had cooled to embers, I’d listened with a tortured sort of rapture as Angharad described what had become of her as a child all those winters ago, in the Battle of Arderydd.” It is 580 C.E.; Languoreth, Queen of Strathclyde, twin sister of Lailoken (later known as Myrddin, or Merlin), has just been reunited with the mystically gifted daughter she’s believed dead for years. Once the truth of the events surrounding Angharad’s disappearance emerges, long-awaited justice will be served, powered in part by the 17-year-old Wisdom Keeper’s supernatural abilities. Those who have read The Lost Queen (2018) and The Forgotten Kingdom (2020) will be right at home as Pike continues her chronicle of the swirling intrigue and bloody confrontations among the Britons, Picts, Scots, Angles, Christians, and other kingdoms and ethnicities of the Arthurian period. Languoreth will again be separated from her daughter as the latter journeys into the “Shadowed Lands” to apprentice herself to the weatherworking druid Briochan, and though she’d love to visit her pregnant daughter, Gladys, in a neighboring kingdom, her husband insists she stay at home to monitor the machinations of a malign Christian monk named Mungo. To top it off, she has renounced the solace of her affair with the warrior Maelgwn Pendragon: “I am a woman of the Old Way, married to a Christian. Adultery is not tolerated. Should we be discovered, our people would lose an irreplicable advocate. You know as well as I, there is nothing that would delight Mungo more.” Meanwhile, Artúr mac Aedan (Arthur) must answer a call from his father to assume his destiny among the Scots. An author’s note provides historical context, includes details for readers who plan to visit the U.K. locations, and promises that there is more to come.
Even the Loch Ness monster makes an appearance in this kaleidoscopic epic with deep roots in both history and myth.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781501191480
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella,...
A deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella, but because the setup seems generic. A black soldier returns from the Korean War, where he faces a rocky re-entry, succumbing to alcoholism and suffering from what would subsequently be termed PTSD. Yet perhaps, as someone tells him, his major problem is the culture to which he returns: “An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.” Ultimately, the latest from the Nobel Prize–winning novelist has something more subtle and shattering to offer than such social polemics. As the novel progresses, it becomes less specifically about the troubled soldier and as much about the sister he left behind in Georgia, who was married and deserted young, and who has fallen into the employ of a doctor whose mysterious experiments threaten her life. And, even more crucially, it’s about the relationship between the brother and his younger sister, which changes significantly after his return home, as both of them undergo significant transformations. “She was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine,” thinks the soldier. He discovers that “while his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.” As his sister is becoming a woman who can stand on her own, her brother ultimately comes to terms with dark truths and deep pain that he had attempted to numb with alcohol. Before they achieve an epiphany that is mutually redemptive, even the earlier reference to “dogs” reveals itself as more than gratuitous.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-59416-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
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