A black man is shot and killed for daring to fish on a lake in an exclusively white Alabama county, a murder that links and illuminates the story's richly complex characters. A woman of conscience nearly buried in an abusive marriage rises against her Klansman husband; a black minister, whose mother and grandparents fled the county 75 years ago, returns for a civil rights march organized by a young white redneck native; a brash newcomer and dissatisfied housewife challenges the complacency and morality of her neighbors. These are ordinary folks whose lives embody varied measures of good, evil, desire, pain, despair, and courage. This first novel is a story of divisions and connections within and between races, genders, and families by an author whose insight crosses each divide with remarkable skill and enormous heart. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/96.]-Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
A passionate first novel about racial injustice, corrosive secrets, and the unexpected resilience of the hard-pressed.
Rose of Sharon is, as the story begins, without much hope: Her only child has died; her abusive husband, Darnell, spends most of his time ranting about black conspiracies; and her ancient mother is withdrawing into reveries of the past. When Darnell and his Klan cronies kill a black man who has had the temerity to go fishing repeatedly in their all-white Alabama county (it's the 1980s, but in Prince George County it might as well be the 1940s), Rose does nothing, until she is challenged by a newcomer, the brash, free- spirited Lily. Also harassed by an abusive husband, Lily—who's critical of the sheriff's investigation of the murder—leaves him and takes a lover, an activist who has come to the area to open an alternative school. When tragedy overtakes Lily, Rose finally finds the strength to leave her own husband and speak out, defying her community for the sake of justice. Hill deftly weaves together a number of subplots, among them the long history of racial violence in the county, going back to "the Trouble" in 1914, when the white residents drove the entire black population out, burning down homes and killing those who fought back. A series of figures, including the bright, reticent Rose, the audacious Lily, their violent husbands, an elderly black minister whose parents had once lived in the county, and a decent young white man whose religious faith (vividly rendered) moves him to expose the county's bloody history and challenge its beliefs, narrate the action.
The voices occasionally slip into a sameness, and they seem at times a bit too rhetorically charged to be entirely believable. Nonetheless, Hill is a deft storyteller: He keeps the story moving propulsively forward and offers a climactic battle for justice that is stirring and persuasive. And in Rose he has created an iconoclastic, moving heroine.
