Black Cloud Rising
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
Already excerpted in the New Yorker, Black Cloud Rising is a compelling and important historical novel that takes us back to an extraordinary moment when enslaved men and women were shedding their bonds and embracing freedom
By fall of 1863, Union forces had taken control of Tidewater Virginia, and established a toehold in eastern North Carolina, including along the Outer Banks. Thousands of freed slaves and runaways flooded the Union lines, but Confederate irregulars still roamed the region. In December, the newly formed African Brigade, a unit of these former slaves led by General Edward Augustus Wild—a one-armed, impassioned Abolitionist—set out from Portsmouth to hunt down the rebel guerillas and extinguish the threat.
From this little-known historical episode comes Black Cloud Rising, a dramatic, moving account of these soldiers—men who only weeks earlier had been enslaved, but were now Union infantrymen setting out to fight their former owners. At the heart of the narrative is Sergeant Richard Etheridge, the son of a slave and her master, raised with some privileges but constantly reminded of his place. Deeply conflicted about his past, Richard is eager to show himself to be a credit to his race. As the African Brigade conducts raids through the areas occupied by the Confederate Partisan Rangers, he and his comrades recognize that they are fighting for more than territory. Wild’s mission is to prove that his troops can be trusted as soldiers in combat. And because many of the men have fled from the very plantations in their path, each raid is also an opportunity to free loved ones left behind. For Richard, this means the possibility of reuniting with Fanny, the woman he hopes to marry one day.
With powerful depictions of the bonds formed between fighting men and heartrending scenes of sacrifice and courage, Black Cloud Rising offers a compelling and nuanced portrait of enslaved men and women crossing the threshold to freedom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The story of the African Brigade, a unit of Black freedmen who fought for the Union during the Civil War, gets its due in this superior adult debut from Faladé (after the YA novel Away Running). The brigade's efforts to hunt down Confederate guerrillas in North Carolina in the fall of 1863 are conveyed by Richard Etheridge, a historical figure who was born into slavery on Roanoke Island and fathered by his master, and whose white half-sister taught him to read and write. That upbringing left him with some ambivalence after he was freed; having enlisted in the Union Army "to help destroy" the Confederacy and its dehumanizing culture, Etheridge still retains some fond memories of the time before his liberation. As the brigade prepares for military action in hostile terrain, Etheridge flashes back to his past and to his time with Fanny Aydlett, the love interest he left behind to join the fight. Those recollections alternate with taut combat sequences as the unit struggles to pacify the area. Etheridge is made a fascinating figure, well suited to serve as the focal point for Faladé's exploration of the complexities of Etheridge and his comrades's rapid shift from powerlessness to armed military duty. Engrossing and complex, this will have readers riveted.