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Absalom's Daughters by Suzanne Feldman
on 7/5/2016
Pages: 272 pages
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A spellbinding debut about half sisters, one black and one white, on a 1950s road trip through the American South
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 strife 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.
Two little girls living in the Jim Crow south discover they are half sisters in Absalom’s Daughters by Suzanne Feldman. Cassie is black, poor and raised in the laundry business ran by her grandmother. Judith is white also poor, illiterate and delivers laundry for pennies to the rich folks in Heron-Neck Mississippi. When Cassie notices how much the two of them favor, she is drawn to Judith, and they are forever connected.
When Judith finds out their father who abandoned them both has inherited some money and lives in Virginia, she decides to get some of that money so that she can move to New York City and become a famous singer. Cassie ends up on the road with her, and it’s a road trip they will soon not forget.
There are a lot of themes in this story, family, colorism, racism, magic, abandonment and race issues. It is set in the 50’s, and the author did an excellent job of giving the reader a feel for that period. I also liked there was some humor in places to take the edge off of the deep topics.
Overall I liked this story but wanted more about the outcome of the characters, yet that could be by design when we see them in the next book? I recommend this book and would read other books by this author.
Reviewed by: Linda C
