Lalita Tademy's riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable "bleaching of the line" as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area's white French planters. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However, neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives Cane River much of its narrative drive.

The author makes it clear exactly where these prohibitions came from. Plantation society was rigidly hierarchical, after all, particularly on the heels of the Civil War and the economic hardships that came with Reconstruction. The only permissible path upward for hard-working, ambitious African Americans was indirect. A meteoric rise, or too obvious an appearance of prosperity, would be swiftly punished. To enable the slow but steady advance of their clan, the black women of Cane River plot, plead, deceive, and manipulate their way through history, extracting crucial gifts of money and property along the way. In the wake of a visit from the 1880 census taker, the aged Elisabeth reflects on how far they had come. When the census taker looked at them, he saw colored first, asking questions like single or married, trying to introduce shame where there was none. He took what he saw and foolishly put those things down on a list for others to study. Could he even understand the pride in being able to say that Emily could read and write? They could ask whatever they wanted, but what he should have been marking in the book was family, and landholder, and educated, each generation gathering momentum, adding something special to the brew. In her introduction, Tademy explains that as a young woman, she failed to appreciate the love and reverence with which her mother and her four uncles spoke of their lively Grandma 'Tite (short for "Mademoiselle Petite"). She resented her great-grandmother's skin-color biases, which were as much a part of Tademy's memory as were her great-grandmother's trademark dance moves. But the old stories haunted the author, and armed with a couple of pages of history compiled by a distant Louisiana cousin, she began to piece together a genealogy. The result? Tademy eventually left her position as vice president of a Fortune 500 company and set to work on Cane River, in which she has deftly and movingly reconstructed the world of her ancestors. --Regina Marler


From Publishers Weekly
Like the river of its title, Tademy's saga of strong-willed black women flows from one generation to the next, from slavery to freedom. Elisabeth is a slave on a Creole plantation, as is her daughter, Suzette. The family, based on Tademy's own ancestors, wins freedom after the Civil War, but Suzette's daughter, Philomene, must struggle to keep her family together and to achieve financial independence. The melodious, expressive voices of narrators Belafonte and Payton are a pleasure to listen to, while Moore's tougher, grittier tone conveys the hardships faced by the family. However, Belafonte and Payton sometimes ignore vocal directions provided by the novel. For example, Payton reads one passage in a whisper even though the text says "in her excitement, Philomene's voice rose... louder and louder." The complex, multigenerational tale suffers somewhat in abridgment: at times the narrative too abruptly jumps ahead by decades and some emotional situations are given short shrift, as when Philomene discovers that her daughter Bette, whom she was told died as a baby nearly 20 years earlier, is actually alive and living nearby. Still, the audio succeeds in evoking the struggles of black women to provide better lives for their children despite all odds. Simultaneous release with the Warner hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 12). Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Melodic voices and elegant description of four generations of African-American women lull you into the past and bring you into the rich, textured lives of the Derbanne family. All three narrators are perfect for their respective roles. Each has an intelligent voice that captures the entire essence of the character portrayed. The musical interludes of violins, harmonicas, and mandolins add to the experience. This is an audiobook that makes you sad when it ends. This abridgment has an abrupt end and does not do justice to the rest of the book. You know that there's too much left out, and it leaves you wanting to know the rest. D.L.M. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Tademy halted a career as a high-powered technology executive to research her family's history. Her findings--four generations of strong-willed black women who survived slavery and racial injustices, maintained strong family ties, and left a legacy of faith and accomplishment--are transformed here into a powerful historical novel. The tale is told from the perspectives of Suzette, Philomene, and Emily, all born and raised in a small farming community in Louisiana. Suzette was raped by one of her master's relatives, and this set a pattern of race-mixing for her descendants. Philomene, Suzette's daughter, is desired by a powerful white man, Narcisse, and, after her slave husband is sold away and she loses her children, succumbs to his attentions. But she uses her sexual allure and a gift for premonition to secure protection and, after slavery ends, land and education for her family. Philomene's fierce determination reconstitutes the family on land she has secured from Narcisse. She is also determined that her daughter, Emily, will have every possible advantage, including, eventually, a wealthy white protector. Throughout three generations, however, none of the women escapes the social conventions forbidding interracial marriages; each is abandoned or driven away when her white protector wants to produce legal progeny. The incidental, progressive whitening of the family ends when Emily's son, T. O., marries a dark-skinned woman and reclaims his racial identity, inaugurating the line from which Tademy comes. Including old photographs and documents verifying the reality that underlies it, this fascinating account of American slavery and race-mixing should enthrall readers who love historical fiction. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


San Jose Mercury News, 4/15/01
"...will haunt you...rich with fascinating detail...powerful in its story-telling...a journey well worth taking..."


San Francisco Chronicle, 4/22/01
"...a long-overdue response to Alex Haley's Roots... it is about...the quiet unmapped stories that make up history..."


Billie Letts
"A compelling story! A powerful book!"

FROM OUR EDITORS

When the urge hit her, Lalita Tademy was corporate vice president of Sun Microsystems: "I had the feeling there was something else I was supposed to do." While she was deciding what that something else was, Tademy spent two years researching "the slave branch" of her family, "my mother's side." Returning to her ancestors' Cane River roots, she scouted old sharecroppers' farms; ransacked old courthouse archives; plotted a paper trail from grueling bondage to better days. Then, discovering what "I was supposed to do," she sat down to write this novel about the lives of slaves who were never allowed to write it themselves. Genealogy with wings.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Mingling historical fact with fiction, Lalita Tademy's epic novel is based on the lives of four generations of African American women and is the result of years of exhaustive research and an obsessive odyssey to uncover her family's past.

SYNOPSIS

An Oprah Book Club Selection!

Lalita Tademy's epic novel is based on the lives of four generations of African American women and is the result of years of exhaustive research and an obsessive odyssey to uncover her family's past.

FROM THE CRITICS

Billie Letts

A compelling story! A powerful book!

San Jose Mercury News

...will haunt you long after you've shared their stories if suffering, abuse, joy...rich with fascinating detail...powerful in its story-telling...a journey well worth taking...

Edward Ball

I admire what Lalita Tademy has done, writing fiction from fact to rbing to life what would otherwise be lost...

San Francisco Chronicle

...a long-overdue response to Alex Haley's "Roots..."it is about the way the past haunts the emotions and politics of the everyday and about the quiet unmapped stories that make up history...

Publishers Weekly