Song Yet Sung

New York, N.Y.: Riverhead Books, 2008. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good. [8], 359, [1] pages. Inscribed by the author on the half title page. Inscription reads: To Tim, Thank you for your kind hospitality. Peace, James McBride. James McBride (born September 11, 1957) is an American writer and musician. He is the recipient of the 2013 National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Good Lord Bird. McBride is well known for his 1995 memoir, the bestselling book The Color of Water, which describes his life growing up in a large, poor American-African family that was led by his white Jewish mother. McBride's mother was strict and the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi. His 2008 novel, Song Yet Sung, is about an enslaved woman who has dreams about the future, and a wide array of freed black people, enslaved people, and whites whose lives come together in the odyssey that surrounds the last weeks of this woman's life. Harriet Tubman served as an inspiration for the book, and it provides a fictional depiction of a code of communication that enslaved people used to help runaways attain freedom. The book, based on real-life events that occurred on Maryland's Eastern Shore, also featured the notorious criminal Patty Cannon as a villain. In 2012, McBride co-wrote and co-produced Red Hook Summer (2012) with Spike Lee. In July 2013, McBride co-authored Hard Listening (2013) with the rest of the Rock Bottom Remainders. In August 2013, The Good Lord Bird, a comedy novel, was released by Riverhead Books. The work details the life of notorious abolitionist John Brown. For this book, McBride won the 2013 National Book Award for fiction. Filled with rich history, and told in McBride's signature lyrical style, this book brings into full view a world long misunderstood in American fiction: slavery's haunting choices, pressing both whites and blacks to search for relief in a world where all seemed to lose their moral compass. Derived from a Kirkus review: The slave-owning culture of Maryland's eastern shore in the 1850s comprises the world of McBride's second novel. Recaptured runaway slave Liz Spocott, wounded by a musket blast and chained to fellow runaways in the attic of "trader"-crime boss Patty Cannon, learns "the Code" by which embattled slaves communicate and survive from a skeletal woman ("The old Woman With No Name") and, acting on a chance opportunity, escapes again. The novel then assumes the shape of a series of quests and pursuits. Liz wanders along a perilous route which she hopes will lead her to the Freedom Train, hence northward to safety-accompanied and bedeviled by prophetic "visions" that reach far into "the future of the colored race." The latter are often eerily compelling. Far more compelling are parallel tales: of the Woolman, a gigantic black who lives in a swamp and keeps an alligator named Gar; widowed landowner Kathleen Sullivan, unhinged by sexual longing for her handsome young slave Amber; and Denwood Long, a former slave-catcher lured out of retirement to return Liz to her irate owner Colonel Spocott. The book has great strengths. McBride views the "peculiar institution" of slavery from an impressive multiplicity of involved characters' and observers' viewpoints. He describes emotionally charged, hurried actions superbly, and he makes expert use of folklore, legend and the eponymous unsung song (which we do eventually hear). McBride has fashioned a myth of retribution and sacrifice. Explosively dramatic.