01/11/2021
In this stunning historical tour de force, Little (Don’t Blink When God Calls) deftly examines the Great Migration—the decadeslong mass exodus of six million African Americans from the South to life in the supposedly better Northeast—through the eyes of a whip-smart teenage girl. Carrie Lacey is working for a bigoted, sexist bootlegger when, fearful for her safety, her father arranges for her to skip town. At 95, Carrie—who has been living under the alias Dicie Caughman and has become a noted journalist in New Jersey—is recalled to South Carolina (where she grew up, and where there’s no statute of limitations), and put on trial for the murder of her former employer, Tommy Joe Butler, nearly eight decades earlier. But just when it seems like she might be convicted of the crime, an unlikely culprit emerges.
Little’s painstaking research on the decades covered in this story, from the 1940s to the present, is evident, and the narrative is clear-eyed about the scourge of racism. After Carrie’s father has a confrontation with a group of threatening white men, her mother and siblings depart for safety in another state; “the plan was that Daddy and I were going to meet them…. That never happened.” Carrie is clear-eyed about power relations, too: “Though Daddy knew I was a learned young lady who commanded respect, he still believed that a male human was predisposed to do life’s heavy lifting.” The author pulls no punches in dealing with intense topics, from to Carrie’s rape by Butler to the casual cruelty of Southern whites during this period. It will be hard for readers to remain dry-eyed as they experience the injustice leveled at the book’s Black characters.
Little also has a deft hand with plotting (particularly when Tommy Joe’s actual murderer is unveiled) and a talent for creating memorable characters, especially Dicie’s adopted grandson Baby Boy and her colorful lawyer, Louis Bilal, who scorns Dicie’s anonymous accusers by quipping, “I hope the rattling of their cheap dentures won’t be a distraction in the courtroom.” This outstanding novel will have readers ensnared from the first page to the last.
Takeaway: This outstanding novel, examining American racism through the experiences of an exceptional woman, will ensnare readers.
Great for fans of: Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, Alex Haley’s Roots.
Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
2021-05-19
A Black nonagenarian’s disclosure of a secret from her past sparks an investigation.
In this historical novel, Little moves between present-day Newark and the mid-20th-century rural South, where Carrie Lacey, a young Black girl, finds ways to survive under Jim Crow laws and the constant threat of violence. In Newark, 95-year-old Dicie Caughman is a respected journalist and a pillar of the Black community. But when the police take her in for questioning—from the Women’s History Month luncheon where she is one of the honorees—Dicie reveals that she is Carrie and has long kept her past a secret from everyone. The narrative moves between the present day and the protagonist’s youth as her story slowly develops. With the help of her grandson and a lawyer, she returns to South Carolina to stand trial for the murder of Tommy Joe Butler, a bootlegger she unwillingly worked for. The trial uncovers truths about the rural town where Carrie grew up and where her father was known for helping Black residents facing trouble escape to safer parts of the country. A dramatic courtroom scene divulges what actually happened to Tommy Joe and allows the community to move forward. While the dual timelines make for a complicated narrative, Little manages to keep most of the threads from tangling, particularly through the distinct voices in Carrie’s and Dicie’s sections of the book. But Dicie’s narration, while capturing the voice of an older woman, can be overly detailed. Although the author writes the Southern characters’ speech in a dialect that vividly captures the sound of the region, some readers may find the lines unappealing on the page (“An’ he teached me a whole lot ’bout knowin’ how to claim wha’ be rightfully mine”). The novel is clearly based on both historical research and an intimate understanding of the emotional aspects of the Great Migration, and it does an excellent job of telling the stories not just of individuals, but of entire communities as well.
An engaging and well-researched tale of Black life in the 20th century.
