Starred review from May 19, 2008
Clarke returns with a bittersweet slavery-era saga, partially set—like her smash 1999 Oprah-pick, River, Cross My Heart
—in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown. On Ridley Plantation in rural Maryland, Gabriel Coats picks up his mother Annie's seamstress skills with remarkable ease, but is sold at age 10 to established Georgetown tailor Abraham Pearl. For eight years, Gabriel works hard and keeps an eye on freedom for his family as the Washington abolitionist movement gains momentum. Master Ridley's nephew Aaron begins overseeing the tailoring shop, and Gabriel and Annie busily create sartorial masterpieces as war steadily approaches. By the time freedom becomes a reality, only a few of the Coatses emerge with their pride and abilities intact. Clarke gets the details—emotional, political, domestic, religious—right across the board and crafts complex and appealing characters. Her knowledge of the period and the novel's dense, deliberate narrative create a poignant story about the intricacies of human bondage and its dissolution, built around a family's unshakable faith in one another.
July 1, 2008
In this story of a slave family buying its freedom, Clarke illuminates and personalizes a dreadful part of our nations past. Skilled needleworker Sewing Annie at Ridley Plantation in St. Marys County, Maryland, trains her son, Gabriel, so well that at the age of 10, hes hired out to a tailor in Georgetown (also the site of Clarkes best-selling debut River, Cross My Heart, 1999). Gabriel is successful enough to buy manumission in 1854 for himself and hisfamily, a bargain abrogated by crafty Jonathan Ridley in 1862 when District of Columbia slaves are decreed free with their owners eligible for compensation.Although the family, taking the surname Coats, no longer suffers the cruelty commonly meted out to persons considered the property of others, abject humiliation and threats to their liberty continue. Clarke laces the novel with details, including accounts of syndicates of African American laundry women and U.S.black troops, to the extent that plot becomes secondary. Although some incidents seem extraneous, and even primary characters are dispatched with unseemly haste, this isa vivid view of slavery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)