Red Clay by Charles B. Fancher (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @blackstonepublishing or the review copy of Red Clay by Charles B. Fancher.

Do you annotate your books or keep them pristine? I prefer to keep mine pristine, but I do love to find used copies with annotations.

In 1943, Flex H. Parker has passed away.  His family is surprised when an elderly white woman shows up at his funeral and pronounces that “a lifetime ago, my family owned yours.”  Together, this woman, Adelaide Parker, and Felix’s family piece together the story of their two intwined families.

My thoughts on this novel:

·       Wow!  This was a great family drama that kept me reading too late into the night.  It only took me a couple of days to read this three hundred plus page novel as I could not put it down.  I love complicated family historical fiction stories, and this was a great one.

·       I enjoyed how the story flowed through time focusing on young Felix growing up and becoming a young man, husband, and father in the reconstruction era in the American South.  It was a fraught time any misstep could mean death for a young black man who was trying to get ahead in life.

·       Intertwined was the story of the white Parker family.  Without Felix holding onto a family secret while he was young, the family would not have made it through the Civil War with their fortune in tack.  I in particular liked the growth of Adelaide from an intolerant little girl to an understanding woman.  Her brother Claude had the opposite growth.  They were well developed characters.

·       I liked how most of the characters were three dimensional and were “gray” characters morally.

·       I enjoyed the time period that most of the novel was set in, which was the reconstruction period after the Civil War.  I feel like most novels end with the Civil War and don’t explore this time period.  The author obviously did a lot of research and made that time period come alive in the novel.

·       I felt the story was a bit rushed at the end.  It could have stretched even longer or have been made into a series.

·       I enjoyed the author’s note at the end.  He was inspired by the true-life story of his great-grandfather and included some of his adventures in the novel.  It is overall a work of historical fiction.  I was surprised to read this was his first novel.

·       The book and cover are of great quality, with thick pages.

Overall, Red Clay by Charles B. Fancher is a riveting and compelling historical fiction novel.  I highly recommend it.