USA TODAY Review
'River' flows with racial violence, family courage
On Easter Sunday 1873, 150 black men safeguarding the Colfax, La., courthouse for the officials they had elected with their newly won voting rights were killed in a battle with white supremacists.
Known as "the Colfax Riot," the incident is considered the worst racial violence of Reconstruction; many of the men were massacred as they surrendered or retreated. It forms the cornerstone of Lalita Tademy's second historical novel, Red River.
Like Tademy's first book, this is a fictionalized family history. Cane River, a best seller published in 2001 and selected by Oprah Winfrey's Book Club that summer, explored the lives of four generations of her maternal ancestors.
This time, Tademy has turned to her paternal side. In researching the lives of her great-great-grandparents and their offspring, she learned that her ancestors were among those lost at Colfax.
Red River, Tademy explains in the book, is "a blend of fact and fiction told from the point of view of people whose voices were lost in official records." The fruits of her imagination are given weight by the addition of family anecdotes and historical records.
The first chapters are real page-turners. The story of the battle and the days leading up to it are told primarily from the perspective of Sam Tademy and his friend Israel Smith, both great-great-grandfathers of the author.
Both men are farmers, former slaves drawn into the conflict by their dreams of a better life for their children.
The signs of impending doom that lead up to the battle, the disintegration of the barricades, the burning of the courthouse and the perilous flights to safety are riveting
In their aftermath, the author conveys the hopelessness that envelops the freed slaves as they realize that what awaits them is just another form of captivity.
The second half of the novel traces the Colfax legacy through the generations that follow, focusing on Jackson Tademy and Noby Smith, the sons of Sam and Israel. Both are blessed with good marriages, but their lives are hard in the dangerous world they share with whites still angry that they're free.
But Tademy does not present good and evil strictly in shades of black and white. Her ancestors are shown as people who have the whole pantheon of virtues andvices, kindness and courage sharing space with cowardice and cruelty.
The story falters in the latter chapters as the author packs in more current characters. They ultimately dilute the powerful one-two punch of the "riot" and the shock waves that follow.
Tademy has done a service to readers of all races by reopening a chapter of American history that deserves the light of day.
As in Cane River, she shows herself to be a skilled storyteller able to present the past with power and poignancy.