Red River

When Cane River was published in 2001, Lalita Tademy established herself as the chronicler of her own family's life, since their arrival here as slaves in the 1800s. Mixing family history, fiction, and fact made the story rich and unforgettable enough that Cane River became an Oprah's Book Club®. Now, with Red River , Tademy has done it again. Writing is a second career for Tademy, who is a former vice-president of Sun Microsystems. She left the corporate world to immerse herself in her family's history--and the history of the south. In 1873 in the small southern town of Colfax, Louisiana, history tells us there was a riot. The Tademy family knows different. "1873. Wasn't no riot like they say. It was a massacre..." The blacks are newly free, just beginning life under Reconstruction, with all its promises of equity, the right to vote, to own property and, most importantly, to decide their own future as individuals. Federal Government troops are supposed to arrive to protect the rights of the colored people--but they are not yet on the scene. In one wretched day, white supremacists destroy all the optimism and bright promise by taking Colfax back in an ugly and violent manner. The tragedy begins with the two sides: the white Democrats of Montgomery and the colored and white Republicans of Colfax in the courthouse, finally meeting face to face to discuss their differences. Then, a group of white thugs kills a colored man who was not involved in the courthouse struggle. He was home minding his business and the ugliness came and found him. The confrontation that follows results in the death of more than 100 black men, killed by white supremacists bent on denying them their voting rights and keeping in office those who uphold the status quo prior to the Civil War. The massacre is only the beginning of Tademy's story. Using reliable sources wherever they may be found, she tells the hard and proud story of Sam Tademy, Israel Smith and their families as they fight their way back from the massacre. They get a foothold in Colfax, finally starting a school, owning land and businesses and becoming full-fledged citizens, as they were meant to be. Tademy tells part of our history that we would like to forget; she also tells the story of her family, which is a story worth remembering. --Valerie Ryan From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Four generations of African-American Southerners claw their way up from the ruins of Reconstruction in this engrossing family saga by the author of the bestselling Cane River . Tademy begins with a harrowing recreation of the notorious 1873 massacre at Colfax, La., where 150 blacks, gathered in defense of local Republican officials—and their own citizenship—were killed by white supremacists. Her narrative continues into the 1930s with a fictionalized chronicle of her forebears in the Tademy and Smith clans as they struggle against poverty, buy land and pursue their dream of starting a school for African-American children, their progress challenged by floods, hunting accidents and the Ku Klux Klan. It's an unabashed story of racial uplift (sample dialogue: " 'We getting old, and it up to us to move the race forward'"), but there's plenty of drama and grit to keep it from becoming cloying. Through her characters, the author paints an indelible portrait of rural life under Jim Crow, built around backbreaking farm labor, blood ties that bind and chafe, and the omnipresent fear of a capricious white racism that can undo in a moment the work of a lifetime. Combining family anecdotes with historical research and a rich imagination, Tademy crafts another American epic. Photos. (Jan. 3) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Tademy, author of the highly acclaimed Cane River (2001), revisits her fascinating family history in this fictionalized account of the family's survival of a riot in 1873. Colfax, Louisiana, was the site of a massacre of more than 100 black men by white supremacists determined that the voting rights of former slaves not be honored, keeping in place political officials who upheld the racial hierarchy of slavery even during Reconstruction. Tademy family legend credits Sam Tademy with reclaiming the closest phonetic pronunciation of his original African name following the Civil War, and passing it along in the family. Sam is a major figure in this recollection of the events leading up to the massacre and the struggle thereafter. Tademy draws on family legend, official documents, and newspaper accounts to chronicle the determination of the Tademys, the Smiths, and other black families to take a stand against rising racial brutality in the years following slavery. The Tademys were among the black families who sought to make a place for themselves in the town, buying land, opening a store, starting a school, braving continued attacks by racists, marrying, and continuing their family lines. Tademy brings drama and pathos to an epic account of her family history and a shameful account of our nation's history. Tademy is establishing herself as a compelling chronicler of the complex history of slavery and race in America. Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Lalita Tademy lives in Menlo Park, California. From The Washington Post Like her wildly successful first novel, Cane River, Lalita Tademy's Red River is historical fiction -- rooted in her own family's saga but as much the result of imagination as of research. That approach allows her to avoid the charges of falsifying that plague Alex Haley's 1976 controversial masterwork, Roots, and, more important, to fill in the gaps of a tale some family members were reluctant to discuss. As a novel, Red River is flawed, if entertaining, but as a much-needed illumination of a shameful and often hidden moment of American history, it is compelling indeed. Turning this time to her father's side of the family, Tademy opens Red River during Reconstruction in Colfax, La. Two of her great-great-grandfathers join a group of black farmers determined to see that the candidates they elected will take office despite white opposition. They stake out the courthouse, intending to hold it until federal troops arrive to enforce the election result. The troops never arrive, but a clutch of heavily armed white men does. What happens next becomes known, among local whites at least, as the Colfax Riot of 1873. "The ones with the upper hand make a story fit how they want, and tell it so loud people tricked to thinking it real, but writing down don't make it so," says Tademy's great-great-grandmother Polly. "Eighteen seventy-three. Wasn't no riot like they say. We was close enough to see how it play out. It was a massacre." Tademy spends the first half of the novel leading up to this brutal event, and when it comes, she renders the moment with emotional restraint and tough, heartbreaking detail. But because the reader knows full well what's coming, her efforts to build tension and suspense face an uphill climb. The pace drags until the second half of the book, when it suddenly picks up speed and threatens to gallop away. There are lots of relatives to introduce, lots of members of the Smith and Tademy families to establish between 1873 and 1937, when her great-great-grandfather dies and the novel ends. In the rush, some characters emerge thinly drawn, especially the mothers and wives. (And please let us all agree to cease the practice of introducing black characters first and foremost by the color of their skin. Failing that, let us at least stop comparing those lovely shades to food; in Red River, characters are, variously, the colors of caramel, walnuts, burnt-custard, ginger and pecans.) But Tademy does a wonderful job bringing to life Sam Tademy, the backbone of the novel and the family, and his proud, determined wife, Polly. Her voice -- vivid, lyrical, clear -- shines out above all the rest. Readers may wish more of the novel had been told through her eyes. Tademy also manages to straddle the line between glorifying her ancestors and humanizing them. The Tademys of Colfax not only survived the oppression and brutality of post-Reconstruction America, but they prospered, confronting racism, accumulating land and building the first colored school so that the local black children might build themselves better lives. Lalita Tademy has every right to be proud. -- Kim McLarin, author of "Jump at the Sun" Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. Read more