Let Freedom Sing--a review

This review aired on WVXU's Around Cincinnati on March 28, 2010. You can listen to the review by going to the audio link to the right of this blog.

Let Freedom Sing: of 19th Century Americans by Vivian B. Kline is a treasure chest of historical research wrapped up in the packaging of a novel. Published in 2009 by Outskirts Press, this imaginative work earned Kline the “Innovator, Educator, Writer Award” at the NAACP’s 54th Annual Dinner in Cincinnati. Besides illuminating the struggle for freed slaves during the difficult Reconstruction period, the author presents a fascinating look at Cincinnati’s role in the art, music, commerce, politics and social change agenda of the late 1800s.

Kline’s premise--and major structural device for the novel--is that a group of 21st Century students have gathered in their Cincinnati classroom to do research on the travels of the Fisk Jubilee Singers in order to eventually turn their collective work into a musical. In this frame story structure, the students are free to write about their findings in any form they find comfortable and are encouraged by their facilitator/teacher to work collaboratively. The historical narrative takes the form of diary entries from Ella Sheppard, letters between Maria Longworth Nichols and Susannah Gilbert, linked together with some actual narrative passages where characters interact in person. Kline frames the students’ project work with their meetings about what they intend to do, how it’s progressing, and what they finally think about the prospects of turning their historical research into a musical.

At first, I was skeptical that couching this history in multiple viewpoints would work for me as a reader. Fond as I am of unifying, distinctive voices like that of narrator, Jack Crabb, in Little Big Man, I feared I was in for a bumpy read. But Kline is so careful to get her frame story students writing in the language of the era and the stories themselves are so appealing to anyone who cares about local history, that I soon found myself discussing many of these historical figures and events with my friends and family. I was hooked in by the beginnings of baseball and totally captivated by the high-powered literary salons hosted in New York City by the Cary sisters of North College Hill.

And there are plenty of colorful characters to discuss. Here’s a partial list for your consideration: Jenny Lind, the Nightingale Singer, P.T. Barnum, promoter extraordinaire,Horace Greeley who ran unsuccessfully against Grant for the Presidency, Nicholas Longworth the Cincinnati arts patron and wine maker, Mary Todd Lincoln portrayed here as a grieving wife, Frederick Douglass the orator, Robert Duncanson the artist, and the first woman to ever run for President, Vicky Woodhull, among many others. The exciting part about the story for me was finding out the role Cincinnati and Cincinnatians had in shaping the future of Fisk University, a school located all the way down in Nashville.

Vivian B. Kline was led to write this novel when she made a puzzling addition to her collection of historic picture postcards. When no one in our area was able to identify the group of black performers photographed in
antebellum clothing, Mrs. Kline set out to find the story behind the postcard.
A library in Harlem ultimately identified the group as the first Jubilee Singers who traveled the country--and eventually parts of Europe-- to raise funds for their struggling Fisk University. This post card sent Kline on her remarkable research mission that resulted in Let Freedom Sing: of 19th Century Americans which has the interesting subtitle: An Historical Novel, or Could it Be a Musical? With the author already transforming these historical events into dramatic vignettes, letters, and diary entries and the Fisk Jubilee Singers leaving behind a published repertoire of spirituals, can a musical be far behind? Imagine the costumes!

Eli the Good--a review

(This review aired on WVXU's Around Cincinnati on March 14, 2010. Check links to the right of this blog to listen to the review.)

Eli the Good, the fourth novel by Kentucky’s favorite son, Silas House, is shelved as a work of young adult literature. But the story and scope of the novel transcend this label, as House frames the events of America’s Bicentennial through the 10-year-old eyes of Eli Book. Themes like the power of friendship, the lingering effects of war, self-acceptance, and love of family--even in the face of stark disagreement--lift this account of the summer of 1976 to the level of the 1930s as decribed by Scout Finch( in To Kill a Mockingbird) or Buddy (in “A Christmas Memory.”)

In the spring of 2009, I attended one of House’s writing workshops where he shared his notion of the essential ingredients of story. A good story, according to him, must have both a mystery and a love story. By his own yard stick, House creates a memorable character in Eli, who eavesdrops his way around the shadowy adult mysteries of the Book household discovering the hidden love stories that might keep his family from flying apart.

Mysteries abound from the onset. Why has Eli’s free-spirited Aunt Nell returned to the family? What ancient disagreement with his sister still nags at Stanton Book’s heart? Why does Stanton wake the family with his screaming? And why does Eli’s sister, Josie, goad her parents at every turn? Eli hides under tables, risks the spidery space beneath the porch, and hangs in the hallways, hoping to piece together clues from the adult conversations. When the clues tantalize, but don’t quite add up, he enlists his best friend and neighbor, Edie, to help him plunder his father’s letters home from Viet Nam. The answers aren’t quite what Eli expects.

The love stories in this novel are complex and beautiful. Part of Eli’s yearning stems from the overt devotion he witnesses in his parents’ love for each other. He sometimes feels invisible to them as they exchange meaningful gazes and brush each other’s hands. Another love story exists between Loretta Book and her sister-in-law, Nell, as they revel in each other’s sisterly company and dance in the rain together. And yet another love story finds best friends Edie and Eli, confiding secrets and sharing their love of nature, in the easy pre-dawn of adolescence while Eli’s sister, Josie, suffers the pouty, full-blown drama of teenage love and rebellion.

House underscores the mounting tensions for the characters with frequent allusions to the music of the time. Eli and his mother dance to Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” Nell sings Dylan snippets sadly from the porch swing and advises the ever-skeptical Josie about which Dylan tunes will “rip your guts out,” and later Nell gives Eli the title, “Mother Nature’s Son,” a song she urges Stanton to play on the Gibson while she sings. Following this song, an explosive argument foreshadows that some mysteries will soon be laid bare for the Book family.

As usual, the characters in a House novel are presented in precise, intimate detail--from Eli’s adoration of his mother’s easy, natural beauty at the Fourth of July celebration to his horror at seeing nothing behind his father’s war-traumatized eyes when Eli casually horseplays in a thunderstorm. Important, lyrical scenes develop in nature, backed by bird call, witnessed by foxes and silent beech trees. When darkness falls, House treats us to characters’ favorite words, like “gloaming.”

“Eli the Good” is the title Nell confers upon her struggling young nephew to start him on his path to identity. Kings titled “the Good” rather than “the Great” were much more likely to be kind to their people, she explains. As she dubs him king of his backyard, the reader knows she is hoping he will grow up to be a kind man, able to face the cruelties of the world without becoming part of them. I was sorry to conclude my visit with the Books. Their mysteries and love stories--in the hands of Silas House’s poetic and musical craft--add up to one good story.