Absalom's daughters : a novel

Title:

Author:

Feldman, Suzanne, 1958- author.

Summary:

Self-educated and brown-skinned, Cassie works full time in her grandmother's laundry in rural Mississippi. Illiterate and white, Judith falls for colored music and dreams of life as a big city radio star. These teenaged girls are half-sisters. And when they catch wind of their wayward father's inheritance coming down in Virginia, they hitch their hopes to a road trip together to claim what's rightly theirs.

Edition:

First Edition.

Physical Description:

253 pages ; 22 cm

Genre:

Bildungsromans.

Magic realist fiction.

Subject Term:

African American girls -- Fiction.

Sisters -- Fiction.

Racially mixed people -- Fiction.

Families -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Virginia -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Henry Holt and Company,

Publication Date:

2016

ISBN:

9781627794534

Publication Information:

New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2016.

Call Number:

FELDMAN

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003158733	Adult Fiction	FELDMAN	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A spellbinding debut about half sisters, one black and one white, on a 1950s road trip through the American South

Self-educated and brown-skinned, Cassie works full time in her grandmother's laundry in rural Mississippi. Illiterate and white, Judith falls for "colored music" and dreams of life as a big city radio star. These teenaged girls are half-sisters. And when they catch wind of their wayward father's inheritance coming down in Virginia, they hitch their hopes to a road trip together to claim what's rightly theirs.

In an old junk car, with a frying pan, a ham, and a few dollars hidden in a shoe, they set off through the American Deep South of the 1950s, a bewitchingly beautiful landscape as well as one bedeviled by racial strife and violence. Suzanne Feldman's Absalom's Daughters combines the buddy movie, the coming-of-age tale, and a dash of magical realism to enthrall and move us with an unforgettable, illuminating novel.

Author Notes

Suzanne Feldman , a recipient of the Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize and a finalist for the Bakeless Prize in fiction, holds an MA in fiction from Johns Hopkins University and a BFA in art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the author of award-winning science fiction titles like Speaking Dreams and The Annunciate , published under the pen name Severna Park. Her short fiction has appeared in Narrative , The Missouri Review , Gargoyle , and other literary journals. She lives in Frederick, Maryland.

Reviews (2)

School Library Journal Review

In this nod to Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Cassie, a light-skinned African American girl, and her white half-sister, Judith, could easily be Absalom's daughters. Both girls, uneducated and dirt-poor, live in a small town in 1950s Mississippi. Though born to the same white father and different mothers, the girls did not know of their relationship until their father abandoned Judith and her mother, forcing Judith to make deliveries to Cassie's family laundry. Judith has a powerful singing voice and dreams of becoming a singer on the radio, and Cassie struggles with a grandmother who schemes to arrange her marriage. When a letter arrives from a distant relative suggesting the girls may be in line for an inheritance if they arrive in Remington, VA, by a specified date, Judith is determined to go: fame awaits. With her mother's blessing, Cassie leaves to avoid her grandmother's plan. Escaping in an old junk car, they head north on a road trip, encountering kindness and hostility. The girls are given the opportunity to look forward in their lives, and arriving at their destination provides some answers and allows each young woman to create her own future. The use of the derogatory term for African Americans may offend some teen readers, but it is contextual and well within the culture of its time. Thematically, it helps to explain Cassie's thoughts about herself and her feelings about being a young woman of color. VERDICT Ideal for fans of historical fiction and those interested in learning more about the grim realities of Jim Crow and the harshness of poverty in the 1950s.-Connie Williams, Petaluma High School, CA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publisher's Weekly Review

Feldman's resonant and engrossing debut is a tale of sisterly adventure set in 1950s Mississippi. The book breathes new life into the road trip story both with its inclusion of magical realism and with its memorable pairing of two teenagers-Cassie, who's black, and Judith, who's white-who have recently discovered that they have the same father. When Judith finds a letter explaining that they may be heirs to a rumored family fortune, she decides it's her chance to get enough money to run off to New York City to be a singer. And Cassie, who's destined to be matched with a white man by her black relatives, who are trying to whiten their family with each new generation of biracial offspring, realizes this may be her only opportunity to escape. They steal a car, and with a ham, a gun, and a map so old that state lines are blurred, they head north. Feldman's novel is about how even the sweetness of sisterhood isn't immune to poisonous racial dynamics. This warm story with two endearing leads offers a new frame of understanding for what it means to seek freedom, and what the seeker must give up in exchange. Agent Lisa Grubka, Fletcher & Co. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.