The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

September 7, 2022

The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

George and Isabelle Walker and their son Caleb live a quiet secluded life on the outskirts of Old Ox, Georgia. George has always been an eccentric man: he inherited a large tract of land from his father and he preferred to sell off the land piece by piece rather than work. He spends his time reading and taking long hikes in the forest that he owns. Isabelle loves her husband but has never understood him. Caleb enlisted in the Confederate Army, just like all the other young men in Old Ox. Near the end of the war, Caleb's best friend August brings them word that Caleb has been killed in the war. Following General Lee's surrenders, Old Ox is living under military rule. A short time later, Caleb comes home but by that time, August's father has spread word throughout the town that Caleb is a coward and a deserter. His face is damaged but he is otherwise unharmed. But Caleb and August have a secret - they have been lovers since before the war.

George suddenly decides that rather than sell off more of his land, he will begin to farm peanuts. He hires two former slaves, Prentiss and Landry. His neighbors reset that the two ex-slaves are working for George for wages while so many returning soldiers are unemployed (not that many of them would have worked as farmhands), feeling that it goes against the centuries-old social order. Even though it doesn't affect anyone except the Walkers, all the whites in the community have an opinion. But when Landry stumbles on Caleb and August having a tryst in the forest, disaster follows.

An exceptional book, one of the best books that I've read this year. This title was chosen for Oprah's Book Club, President Obama's reading list and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. How does a community make peace in the wake of civil war and emancipation? Why do so many people feel it's their place to judge others and decide what's right for them? Until God gives me the administrator's passcode, I'll leave that up to Him/Her/Them.

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate

June 16, 2020

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate

As the Civil War rages, slaves Hannie Gossett, her mother, and siblings are sent by their owner from Louisiana to his property in Texas, as a way to protect his assets.  But the relative sent to safeguard the slaves on their journey begins selling them off at the Texas towns they pass through.  Ten years after the end of the Civil War, Hannie still lives at the Gossetts’ Louisiana plantation, but as part of a group of sharecroppers who have worked to gain ownership of their land.  But the plantation owner has gone missing, and the sharecroppers fear that if he dies, his wife will burn the deeds to the sharecroppers’ property.  Hannie breaks into the main house, determined to find the deed, only to find that Mr. Gossett’s mixed race daughter Juneau Jane is there as well, searching for documents that will protect her and her mother (Mr. Gossett's mulatto "fancy woman").  Determined to track down Mr. Gossett or his business partner, Hannie disguises herself as a boy and travels with Gossett’s two daughters from Louisiana to Texas to try and locate one of the men, or at least find out what happened to Gossett.

Along the way, the girls discover a newspaper column called Lost Friends, which prints letters for people (mostly former slaves) seeking lost family members.  They begin to collect more stories from the people they meet on their quest, and Hannie vows to help as many of them as she can, while searching for her own lost family.

In a parallel story, Benny Silva takes a job as an English teacher in Augustine, Texas, the town founded by the Gossett family.  The school is woefully short of supplies, and she contacts Nathan Gossett, the heir to the Gossett house, about donating books from the Gossett library to the school.  Little do either of them suspect that they are opening up a long-sealed chapter of local history.

Like her previous novel (Before We Were Yours), Wingate shines a spotlight on a hidden or forgotten piece of history.  The newspaper excerpts printed between the chapters really humanize the true horror of slavery even among those who treated their slaves "well":  of men owning other people and selling them off with no more thought than they would their cattle, often being sold repeatedly; of the separation of families; of the lifelong desire and need to find those families again, with the search sometimes lasting over 40 years; and of the injustices that former slaves continued to suffer, even after freedom.

Moving and at times gut-wrenching, I highly recommend this historical novel to anyone who wants to learn more about unknown history and injustices that last to this day.