Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge Coming in March

Kaitlyn Greenidge received accolades for her unique debut novel, “We Love You, Charlie Freeman,” which burst on the literary scene in 2016. But first and foremost I believe she would tell you that she is an historian, and it is that penchant for riffling through old manuscripts and newspapers that led to her writing a second novel with one of the most beautiful covers I have ever seen.

“Libertie” was inspired by Greenidge’s discovery of Dr. Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, the first Black female physician to be licensed in the state of New York during the post-civil war era. We meet the fictional Dr. Sampson at her spacious home on a farm that was handed down through several generations. Situated at the top of a hill, graced with a long driveway, it is quickly apparent that Dr. Sampson’s office is a stop on the Underground Railroad and that she keeps this fact carefully guarded from her young daughter Libertie.

As the story unfolds readers will learn that Dr. Sampson keeps many secrets from her daughter but doesn’t shy away from laying the burden of inheritance upon Libertie’s young shoulders. Dr. Sampson teaches Libertie all that she knows about anatomy, herbal medicines, the setting of bones, and the dark truths surrounding childbirth and abortion.

What she fails to talk about with Libertie but what Libertie instinctively picks up on is how, even though they are free Negroes on their own land, for Dr. Sampson’s practice to survive, race and color are at the heart of every transaction. Dr. Sampson could pass for white. Her pale skin tone makes her an “acceptable” physician to the white women in town who will pay handsomely for her discretion.

But Libertie, who is dark, velvet black, is a bridge too far. The patients cringe when Libertie touches them and Libertie’s disdain for them is mutual. She remembers every escapee, scarred, beaten, and battered, brought to them under cover of night from a slave holding state and it makes her ill to see her mother fawn over these women who wield such power.

Greenidge writes with such empathy about the breach between mother and daughter that I wanted to reach through the pages and shake the two of them. Talk to one another! Explain yourselves! But no. Pride, hurt, and misunderstanding combine to push Libertie into a rash decision that will take her far from her mother, to a place where she will need to learn a new language and to adjust to other inequities just as acute as the ones she has left behind.

This lush, lyrical novel bursts with vibrancy and color. A mash-up of historical, coming-of-age, and racial justice story with a sprinkling of magical realism, there is something for every reader in this tale of Black women forging their own paths in those heady days of Reconstruction when anything seemed possible, until it wasn’t.

The Searcher by Tana French

Thanks to my local Maryland book discussion group I’ve now been introduced to the Dublin based writer Tana French. https://www.tanafrench.com/ I had tried to listen to “The Witch Elm” and found that I couldn’t concentrate. For this I blame the early days of Corona. But when my neighbor said she would be discussing “The Searcher” I decided to give her another try and was very pleasantly surprised. Some in the group felt that this novel was over long but I found it compelling from the beginning and throughout.

It is billed as a mystery, in fact it’s on Library Journal’s ten best list in that genre, and though there is a mysterious disappearance that must be solved, this book is so much more. To me the mystery posed in “The Searcher” is the inexplicable nature of human beings.

An insular village in Ireland is the setting, a place where retired Chicago police officer Cal, has moved to in a bid to escape the stress of his job and the detrimental effect it had on both his marriage and his relationship with his adult daughter. But, as is typical of small towns, the locals begin to test Cal. Is he just a “come here” who will leave at the first sign of difficulty or will he become a loyal local? What appears at first to be good-natured malarkey and jovial backslapping at the pub takes on a sinister feel.

French’s ability to create atmosphere is well honed and Ireland itself becomes a major player. She is a glorious writer when describing the natural world, the wildness of the area during a storm, the narrow hiking paths where one false step might land a person in a life sucking bog from which escape is futile. The village is a wasteland for the young. With no industry but farming, those with prospects will leave for the cities and those without will likely fall into small time criminal activity, something Cal has traveled halfway around the world to avoid.

When a lonely thirteen-year-old begins hanging around Cal’s cottage, Cal puts the kid to work scraping and painting. They often work in total silence, which seems to suit them both just fine, until Trey eventually trusts Cal enough to unload his burden. An older brother, Brendon, has gone missing. It has been months now and the child is desolate. The police are uninterested in the family’s plight, poverty and lack of education place the Reddeys on the low end of the social totem pole. But Trey has heard that Cal was a cop in the states and maybe he could help. Of course, against his better judgment, Cal complies, and the true colors of the townsfolk emerge.

For me this was a very melancholy novel. Moral dilemmas are posed and too many of the characters come up short. Normally I am very comfortable with gray areas but in this case the violence and subterfuge called out for retribution which did not come to my satisfaction. Perhaps that’s why this is a great choice for a discussion.

More 2020 Favorites

Here are the five other novels that had me at hello this year.

“Dear Edward” by Ann Napolitano. This intensely deep dive into grief after the horrific deaths of twelve-year-old Edward’s family, along with 183 other passengers on a doomed airplane, is awe inspiring. As Edward heals from his wounds and faces the ultimate question, why was he spared, we learn that humankind’s capacity for love is truly beyond our understanding. My full review here: http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2020/06/ann-napolitanos-dear-edward.html

It was a year full of grief and yet I seemed to run toward books that managed to uplift rather than drown in despair. Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet,” like Ms. Napolitano’s, is a perfect example. In piercingly poetic language O’Farrell portrays the blazing hot love affair between Agnes and a young Latin tutor, Will Shakespeare, who are later devastated by the death of their beloved son by the plague ravaging the village of Stratford-upon-Avon. Though their profound grief is laid bare on the page, their love for their son and for each other will eventually become manifest in Will’s finest play.

I can’t believe that my sister and I are the only two readers who just fell out over Deepa Anappara’s remarkably original debut novel “Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line.” Life for the children living in Delhi’s slums bursts from the pages. The smell of streets strewn with garbage mixed with the odors of roasting meats and spices in the marketplace, is visceral and nine-year-old Jai is the sweetest protagonist I’ve met this year. Children are disappearing from the neighborhood but, unsurprisingly, the police are uninterested because the poverty- stricken families are unimportant in the overall scheme of things. Jai and his friends form their own detective agency, determined to discover what’s happened to their missing friends lending some humor to this disturbing novel of child trafficking. Full review here: http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2020/06/djinn-patrol-on-purple-line.html

Author Rumaan Alam, on the other hand, is getting a tremendous amount of buzz over his prescient novel “Leave the World Behind.” It’s difficult to believe that he wrote this long before our own plague year. I found myself setting it down at the finish and wondering what the hell just happened? What begins as a family getaway at an elegant Air BnB in the Hamptons turns into a life altering experience that will force Amanda and Clay, so proud of their liberal bona fides, to examine the entire construct of their lives when the country’s entire power grid appears to fail, no
internet, no cell service, no way to communicate with the outside world. A knock at the door reveals another couple, desperate to come in, and beliefs about race, class and privilege will be sorely tested. This National Book Award finalist is simply WOW!

And finally, another incredible debut by writer Elizabeth Wetmore thrilled me this year. “Valentine” is the book for readers who are sick and tired of seeing women mistreated, disregarded, dismissed, and put down. Set in the desolate west Texas oil drilling town of Odessa, a place that Wetmore obviously knows well, the brutal rape of a young woman awakens a long- subsumed sense of justice in Mary Rose whose home Glory arrives at battered and broken and seeking help. The attack is discussed in the court of public opinion long before the actual trial and the ugly undercurrent of racism and prejudice is front and center. I reviewed it further here: http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2020/09/valentine-by-elizabeth-wetmore.html

 

Happy New Year dear readers. I’ve begun 2021 with the much talked about “A Children’s Bible” by Lydia Millet interspersed with the voluminous National Book Award winner “The Dead Are Arising,” the now definitive biography of Malcolm X by Les Payne and his daughter Tamara. Stay well, remain patient as difficult as that is. A new president and a vaccine are coming soon!