I just finished this about an hour ago. I cannot say enough about how good it was. Seriously ruins the ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating system. I’m stingy with giving five stars - but even with that there are some books that far exceed even the few I’ve thought of as five star books.

I think with Demon Copperhead (a book many of us thought was extraordinary) I immediately went back to the beginning. There’ve been a few books I’ve done that with. I almost did with this one too - but it’s so soulful that I want to let it sit with me - the feelings the book brings out, I mean.

I get choked up reading books all the time. That happens a bunch in this book. Once, for example, during a passage depicting the collective kindness of a couple of characters, it was so moving I got overwhelmed with appreciation for their goodness. But there was another part when I was struggling not to bawl. So rare for me. But it’s a beautiful sadness.

There are multiple climaxes in the book too! (No Reddit-like pun intended! LOL) The first time it happened, I was confused. Like, how is this book ending when there’s so much left? Is the rest going to be boring? Is it going to jump generations? What the heck? But the author just really knows how to tell a hella fawking good story!

The wordsmithing will leave you having to pause to appreciate it. He does such a good job giving minimalist dialogue maximal meaning and emotion. I may have to turn around and reread it immediately despite what I said at the beginning of this post. I can’t stop thinking about it.

It is set in the Reconstruction Era. There are five main characters. A family of three - father, mother, son. And a family of two brothers, recently “freemen”. In moving on from the plantation where they’d been enslaved they serendipitously camp on the large area of land owned by the family. The five of them go through one riveting set of circumstances after another (see above). The minor characters - who are as well fleshed out as the main characters in most books are - are the residents of Old Ox, Georgia.

I’m trying to be vague about the plot so as not to spoil all the remarkable events of the novel. If you’ve read about the reconstruction era though, you know it was fraught. There was a range of discord about the war, emancipation, the economic upheaval. That backdrop is what moves the plot. And as compelling and engrossing as the plot is - the book is really about connection and inner reflection and humanity.

This book, given the setting and characters, could have been preachy, politically correct, condescending, or heavy-handed. It is none of those things. You’ll have compassion for almost every character and you’ll see the goodness in them that others don’t and that they don’t see in themselves. Almost every character is humanized at some point.

I thought I learned about the book here but didn’t find it written up. I’ve had a lot of luck with books that were Booker Prize winners (won as a debut novel!!) and with Obama’s favorites. This book is both those things so that’s probably where I found it.