CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

More Novel Raves!!

Finished Cornelia Read's A Field of Darkness last evening. Can't say the denouement wasn't telegraphed (by a careful reading between and beneath the lines) but even so, from the denoument to the final lines Ms. Read proffered quite a series of unexpected, even astounding, revelations, making the finish very satisfying.





Following that, I raced through the most scintillating novel I've read in quite some time (probably since reading P. C. Hodgell's GodStalk Trilogy):


Bertrice Berry's Redemption Song. This book, initially commenced in 1995 and published in 2000, is what I call "a set-piece framework," a technique I am using in one of my novels-in-progress-a "story within a story." The horrifying recollections of a slave woman-who, as most slaves of the time, never learned to read nor write, yet at the end of her life found paper and writing implements and recorded her memoirs-are horrid beyond belief, yet historically grounded. Iona's story draws three individuals: the bookstore owner, an upscale woman, and an anthropologist. Although founded in aspects of the Black Experience, the story makes it clear that Spirit overrides color, race, nationality, and gender in its quest to be. Against the backdrop of tremendous cruelty, sadism, pain, and sorrow in the historical narrative, and sorrow and grief and uncertainty in the contemporary setting, the author weaves a constant thread of hope and faith. I have seldom read a novel which continuously throbs so intensely with the heartbeat of Purpose.





Bertrice Berry


Redemption Song


Doubleday 2000


ISBN 0-385-49844-6