Sweetsmoke (2008)

I got this copy of Sweetsmoke by David Fuller (2008) from the always wonderful LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. It will be available for purchase in September (I think -- the cover isn't entirely clear).

Sweetsmoke is the story of Cassius, a slave on a Virginia tobacco plantation in the middle of the Civil War. Cassius is a favorite of the master, Hoke Howard, and was trained as a carpenter which keeps him from the field work and gives him a little more independence than the other slaves. A horrible event in his past caused him to lose his wife and son, and almost lose his life, but he was healed by Emoline Justice, a former slave from the Sweetsmoke plantation who gained her freedom from Hoke. While he is recuperating in her home, she teaches him to read and write and opens up a second world when he is forced to return to the plantation. But then time passes, and Emoline is found murdered in her home. Although he is a slave with little freedom of movement and fewer rights, Cassius decides to solve the mystery of Justice's murder and avenge her death.

Fuller spent eight years researching this novel, and it shows in the knowing details of the landscape, the plantation house, and the quarters. Writing about slavery and the Civil War is a tricky proposition that can easily swerve into the land of overblown cliches, romanticizing, and melodramatic and manipulative action. Fuller doesn't do that, here. Horrible things happen, and many of the scenes are uncomfortable and sickening, as you might expect, but there is something else -- a straightforwardness in his characters and a focus in the story that makes this a really nice read.

Wanna borrow it?