Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

ABSALOM'S DAUGHTERS

Suzanne Feldman

Two half-sisters, one black and one white, embark on a risky road trip through the 1950s Jim Crow South in this spellbinding story of identity and race.

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 striving 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.

Suzanne Feldman, a recipient of the Missouri Review Editors' Prize and a finalist for the Bakeless Prize in fiction, holds a Masters degree in fiction from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelors degree in art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her short fiction has appeared in Narrative, The Missouri Review, Gargoyle, and other literary journals. She lives in Frederick, Maryland.

Available products
Book Published 2016-07-05 by Holt

Comments

Magnificent . . . . [Feldman’s] work is reminiscent of both William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, but her voice is entirely her own and utterly original. [Her] prose blisters and pops with sparks. . . . [T]here is a tart sweetness to Judith and Cassie’s interactions. In this novel, most things are not as they seem, and Feldman doesn't hew too close to reality . . . . Searing and magical . . . by a monumental new talent

...Through her styling, vernacular, and storytelling, Suzanne Feldman has created in Absalom’s Daughters a novel that engages, entertains, provokes, and ultimately reminds us of the complexity and fragility of being human in a world overcrowded with expectation and agenda.

Absalom’s Daughters is a beautiful and compelling story, written with utmost authority.

Beautiful, funny, and wise, Absalom's Daughters is a moving adventure and a powerful evocation of the Jim Crow South. Judith and Cassie's odyssey embodies America's long struggle to achieve compassion and justice despite our deep racial divide. By turns sweet and sly, the story of these two perfectly realized sisters inspired me and gave me hope. It could not be timelier, but it also achieves the timelessness of truly great fiction.

Sharp-eyed and witty, ABSALOM'S DAUGHTERS is a delightful recipe consisting of one part girls' road trip, one part family saga, and one part good old-fashioned Southern yarn. The path from Mississippi to Virginia is full of danger and Jim Crow bigotry, but Cassie and Judith are the perfect heroines to take it on. An absorbing read, full of heart!