Absorbing story of a mixed-race boy growing to manhood in the south. Treated equally as his white siblings by his white Daddy while growing up, about age 15 he became aware that he would never be treated as a white man. Paul-Edward Logan would set out running with his best friend Mitchell Thomas, after disobeying his father about a horse race. They would find themselves in Mississippi. He never tried to 'pass' for white except once when he felt he & Mitchell (who was black) were in danger. What he wanted more than anything else was land. He had loved the land he grew up on and he wanted something similar that he could call his own. He never wavered in this dream. At whatever he set out to do to earn a living such as working in the rough logging camps or building made-to-order beautiful pieces of furniture, he did it well. His courage was unfailing, he asked over & over for a loan to buy land and over & over he was told 'no'. But he never gave up. At the end you find that the story is based on the author's own family. I am reminded again and again that to have been a slave or to have come from a slave (such as Paul-Edward) took great courage. What I sometimes fail to see is the even greater courage it took for a black man (or woman) to have a dream in a white man's world and never give up on it. This story is remarkable in sharing that. ( )

THE LAND, by Mildred D. Taylor, Phyllis Fogelman Books, September 2001

Shortly after I set out walking toward Fern Place School for my first day of kindergarten, a boy my age whom I'd never seen before crossed the road, stopped on the sidewalk in front of me, and declared "I hate you!" That boy became my best friend for the next few years, until my parents eventually moved us to a different town.

I recalled this incident this morning after staying up all night reading the exciting surprise that UPS delivered yesterday: an advance copy of THE LAND, by Mildred D. Taylor, a prequel to her beloved Newbery Medal winner, ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY. Thousands of teachers across the country who teach ROLL OF THUNDER (many of whom grew up reading it), along with today's young fans of Mildred Taylor, will be bowled over by this new addition to the Logan legacy. I found it to be the most powerful book of the series.

In ROLL OF THUNDER Big Ma briefly tells Cassie the story of how the family came to own the land on which Cassie lives. Both Caroline and Cassie's father, David, pass on to her the importance of the land, and, indeed, in the last lines of ROLL OF THUNDER Cassie states: "I cried for T.J. For T.J. and the land."

THE LAND is the story of Paul Edward Logan, the paternal grandfather of Cassie. It is also the story of Caroline Logan (whom we know as Big Ma). This is a tale of the harshness of life in the South during Reconstruction, particularly when you're considered neither black enough nor white enough. It is a celebration of hard work and family and setting your sights on a goal. It is also a powerful story of friendship, which is why I'm sitting here quietly thinking about the friendships I've had in my life.

The last third of THE LAND recounts Paul Edward's discovery of the perfect piece of land and his determination, in the face of the ugly white hatred of that time, to acquire it.

But above all THE LAND is the story of two very different young men, born at the end of slavery, who have grown up on the same plantation and have slowly crafted a friendship which becomes closer than the bond between brothers.

This is one of those times that I'll say no more so as not to spoil the opportunity for you which I just had--to spend all night reading one of the best stories you'll get your hands on this year.

Richie Partington
Richie's Picks
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )

Another prequel -- novel-length, this time! Yay! -- centering on Cassie's paternal grandfather who, as attentive readers may remember, had a white daddy. (I had forgotten, which meant that the punchline of the opening scene -- a scene which had been bothering me as "I've gotten something mixed up here" -- landed with a wham.) Taylor's oft-repeated theme that you can't have true friendships between folks with different levels of social power is supercharged in The Land. It's one thing to be standoffish to Jeremy Simms in Roll of Thunder, but Paul-Edward's half-brothers consider themselves to be Paul-Edward's no-hyphen brothers, with all the loyalty against outsiders that the word is expected to imply. And Paul-Edward considers them to be the same.

I'll just stop right there on that topic, because as you might expect, Taylor has a lot to say about that, and further discussion is likely to be spoilerific. Except to say, I think she nails the complexity of loyalty and betrayal in families: loyalty through betrayal, betrayal through loyalty, and whether or not it's possible to completely discount either betrayals or loyalty in the context of the other. When friends treat you like this, you pack up and move on, never looking back; when family treats you like this, though... Well, you can pack up and move on, but it's much harder to never look back. And, for that matter, it's not altogether clear that you should.

There's a lot of marvelous back-story here. We get to see Big Ma as a young woman -- oh, but she reminds me of Cassie! -- Tom Bee and John Wallace before The Friendship, and both Harlan Granger and Wade Jamison as boys. (I hate to say how tense I got when Wade showed up -- it was in the context of "I don't care how nice he seems, he's white, and thus by definition dangerous." My stomach sank when I read those lines; we know that such advice in a Taylor novel is usually right. Apparently, it's really important to me to be able to cling to Wade Jamison as a signifier of possibility.)

Speaking of Wade, while this book doesn't take up political issues as vigorously as Taylor's other novels--earlier ones had big subplots about the for-the-benefit-of-whites justice system, voter disenfranchisement, and using race as a wedge issue in union busting--but it does lay out, snapshot clear, the early resistance to reparations among whites who otherwise believed in treating folks of color with respect. Unfunnily enough, it doesn't sound much different than the resistance to it now.

I really enjoyed this book. It would be a good one to own. I'm thinking of reading her other books. I found her writings on relationships with people to still be true today. One really does need to have something of their own. ( )