Stand the Storm: A Novel
by Breena Clarke
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Book Summary Information
Author: Breena ClarkeEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-07-28
ISBN: 0316007048
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of Stand the Storm: A Novel
Book Review: We'll Anchor By and By...
Summary: 4 Stars
Breena Clarke's Stand the Storm centers on the story of "Sewing Annie" Coats and her son, Gabriel, expert tailors who manage to purchase their freedom at the cost of entering a less than lucrative business arrangement with their former owner. Nonetheless, hard work and thriftiness allow them to purchase Ellen (Annie's equally talented daughter) and her daughter, Delia. Prosperity reigns but the clan is happy for only a short while. The threat of re-enslavement looms at every corner as the reality of the times are made clear with the risk of being illegally captured by "pinchers" and sold South never to be seen again. There was also the ever-changing laws and complicated slave/freeman policies that deceitful slave owners misuse to extort and exploit freemen, not to mention the nerve-wrecking uncertainty of their status living in a district surrounded by slaveholding states as the country enters the Civil War.
The history lessons are supplemented with interludes of courtship and conflict featuring some colorful, charismatic and lovable, yet sympathetic characters who serve as love interests and arch nemeses for Annie and Gabriel. Luck and courage are also factors in their adventures propelling the "freedom train." Their industrious and ingenious survival skills are demonstrated during their humiliating encounters with whites and other undesirables. Unsurprisingly, for a story rooted in this era, the ugliness of racism and sexism are a given and Clarke does not skirt the realities of the degrading, violent sexual abuse that women and children of color endured at the hands of slavers, owners, or any white male in a position of authority. However, through Delia, the author broaches the sensitivities of colorism and the complications that it brings to the Coats's household.
Told largely from the freedmen's perspective in Washington's Georgetown district, this literary novel will appeal to Historical Fiction buffs in that it evokes the cadence and archaic vocabulary of the antebellum era and elicits the bittersweet nostalgia that comes with it. The author conjures poignant images to transport the reader back to the bustling rat-infested waterfronts, the narrow, muddy thoroughfares lined with trendy businesses and salacious bordellos, and the horrors of blood-soaked, body-littered battlefields. It is these circumstances that prompts a forlorn Annie (depressed when her beloved Gabriel joins the Union Army) to reminisce about her early years enslaved on the plantation and yearns to return to perceived safety, quiet, and comfort of it. The author continues down this conflicted path as she delves into the complicated familial interrelationships of the Coats clan, the ramifications and hardships of a (slave) mother's love, and its ultimate affects on the ties that bind. This title is well researched and recommended for literary, historical fiction fans or those interested in the challenges of African Americans in the antebellum period.
Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub
July 25, 2008
Summary of Stand the Storm: A Novel
Even though Sewing Annie Coats and her son, Gabriel, have managed to buy their freedom, their lives are still marked by constant struggle and sacrifice. Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, where the Coatses operate a tailor's shop and laundry, is supposed to be a "promised land" for former slaves but is effectively a frontier town, gritty and dangerous, with no laws protecting black people.The remarkable emotional energy with which the Coatses wage their daily battles-as they negotiate with their former owner, as they assist escaped slaves en route to freedom, as they prepare for the encroaching war, and as they strive to love each other enough-is what propels STAND THE STORM and makes the novel's tragic denouement so devastating.
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