Synopses & Reviews
Hailed as powerful,accomplished, and spellbinding, Lalita Tademy's first novel Cane River was a New York Times bestseller and the 2001 Oprah Book Club Summer Selection. Now with her evocative, luminous style and painstaking research, she takes her family's story even further, back to a little-chronicled, deliberately-forgotten time...and the struggle of three extraordinary generations of African-American men to forge brutal injustice and shattered promise into a limitless future for their children... RED RIVERFor the newly-freed black residents of Colfax, Louisiana, the beginning of Reconstruction promised them the right to vote, own property-and at last control their own lives.Tademy saw a chance to start a school for his children and neighbors. His friend Israel Smith was determined to start a community business and gain economic freedom. But in the space of a day, marauding whites would take back Colfax in one of the deadliest cases of racial violence in the South. In the bitter aftermath, Sam and Israel's fight to recover and build their dreams will draw on the best they and their families have to give-and the worst they couldn't have foreseen. Sam's hidden resilience will make him an unexpected leader, even as it puts his conscience and life on the line. Israel finds ironic success-and the bitterest of betrayals. And their greatest challenge will be to pass on to their sons and grandsons a proud heritage never forgotten-and the strength to meet the demands of the past and future in their own unique ways. An unforgettable achievement, a history brought to vibrant life through one of the most memorable families in fiction, RED RIVER is about fathers and sons, husbands and wives-and the hopeful, heartbreaking choices we all must make to claim the legacy that is ours.
Review
"Tademy is establishing herself as a compelling chronicler of the complex history of slavery and race in America." Booklist
Review
"This engrossing and eyeopening emotional family saga spans several generations while bringing an African American perspective to a very painful time in U.S. history." Library Journal
Review
"[T]he book sheds light on an overlooked event, and is rife with palpable tension." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Tademy...manages to straddle the line between glorifying her ancestors and humanizing them." Washington Post
Review
"Ms. Tademy's family is a fascinating wealth of stories and largely ignored American history. It is our good fortune that she, a gifted storyteller, had the wisdom to know that these stories belong to all of us." Dallas Morning News
Review
"Tademy has done a service to readers of all races by reopening a chapter of American history that deserves the light of day." USA Today
Synopsis
"The intertwining stories of two Louisiana families--three generations of African-American men--and their struggles to make a place for themselves in a country deeply divided in the aftermath of the Civil War and beyond"--Provided by publisher.
Synopsis
From the New York Times bestselling author of Cane River comes the dramatic, intertwining story of two families and their struggles during the tumultuous years that followed the Civil War.
Synopsis
The lives of three generations of two African-American families intertwine in the tumultuous and bloody aftermath of the Civil War as newly freed slaves fight for their individual liberties as they struggle to build new lives in The Bottom, a poor settlement just down Red River from Colfax, Louisiana. 150,000 first printing.
Synopsis
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Cane River comes the paperback debut of an epic work of fiction that tells the dramatic, intertwining story of two families and their struggles to make a place for themselves in a country deeply divided in the aftermath of the Civil War.
About the Author
Tademy is a former vice-president of Sun Microsystems who left corporate world to immerse herself in tracing her family's history.