Myramcilvain
Waters Plantation.
A New Beginning For An Award Winning Book.
It is 1875 in Texas, and Albert Waters takes pride in his image—prosperous merchant and plantation owner who freed slaves before the Civil War and gave them land afterward. Then his son Toby, ready to depart for Harvard Medical College, demands answers. Was his mother a slave?
“To say that McIlvain writes well is an understatement; she makes readers truly feel for her characters, and as a result, they seem very much like real people, not fictional ones. . . There’s definitely a sagalike quality to McIlvain’s tale, with key moments of both sorrow and optimism—good people die, but others carry on and have children. She also offers an ending that will remind readers that the end of Reconstruction was also the beginning of Jim Crow. But still, through it all, one gets a sense of indomitable hope.
Readers will likely welcome a sequel to this well-wrought historical family saga.” ––Kirkus Review––
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Excerpts:
Al sucked in deep breaths. “Do you smell smoke?”
The late afternoon sky shimmered in a gray film hovering listlessly above distant treetops. Then came Al’s low whisper, “Jesus, that’s our place…”
Sunshine picked up her pace to Al’s gentle snap of the reins, and they rode in rigid silence toward the thickening haze. Amelia gripped the metal armrest as the road made the final turn toward the pecan orchard. Rows of ghost trees shrouded in an acrid haze of smoke encased them in a suffocating cocoon. White ash covered mounds of debris. Was it the charred remains of desks? Remnants of thick beams glowed red under the canopy of cottonwoods––trunks scalded raw. Beyond where the school had stood, the scattering of foundation bricks lay still and silent marking the cold ruins of the teacherage.
“My god, they came back.” Al snapped the reins, hurrying Sunshine through the smoke to the big house.
The clatter of their buggy—a clarion call—brought a wave of grieving faces down the front steps from the second-floor veranda and out of Mama Zoé’s quarters below. The hush made Amelia’s throat draw shut in terror.
“They didn’t kill anybody.” Hébert’s deep baritone boomed from the back of the crowd.
Do not let these people see you collapse. Amelia scurried down from the buggy and welcomed the arms clasping her, relaxed against the heaving breasts and the hard-muscled shoulders as they passed her and Al among them to face Hébert. Al leaned heavily on his cane. She slipped her arm around her husband, as much to support herself as to help him.
“We had one of our ‘Owl Meetings’ as the white folks like to call them. We did some last-minute organizing for the presidential election. They came before daylight. Nobody heard them. The crackling of the school flames woke Ezra. He yelled from his front room. We ran out in our night clothes. When they spotted us, they started shooting.”