To be honest, I was reading this in bits and pieces, which probably didnt help things, but there also wasnt anything that made me want to sit down and read whole chunks in one go either. Was annoyed with the timeline jumping in and out in the middle of the paragraph (present, present, present, something he did 20 years ago, which affects why he does this 5 years from now, present, present).......dont really care....

Narra la historia de Henry Townsend, un granjero negro y antiguo esclavo que cae bajo la tutela de William Robbins, el hombre más poderoso del condado de Manchester, Virginia. Asegurándose de nunca eludir la ley, Townsend maneja sus asuntos con una disciplina inusual.Pero cuando la muerte lo toma inesperadamente, su viuda, Caldonia, no puede mantener el orden de la herencia y se produce el caos. Jones ha entretejido una nota al pie de la historia en una epopeya que da una mirada inquebrantable a la esclavitud en todas sus complejidades morales.

Interesting historical novel that highlights slavery in Virginia for what it is, even if the slaveholder is a free black man. ( )

Set in antebellum Virginia, a former slave, Henry Townsend, owns fifty acres of land and thirty-three slaves. As the story opens, Townsend is dying. The novel chronicles his life, the lives of his family members, and the lives of people he encountered in the community.

The main characters are three-dimensional and feel like real people, with both admirable traits and flaws. Jones employs an omniscient narrator and non-linear storytelling. He weaves together overlapping stories of past and present events, such that the reader knows what happens to these people in the future before knowing what has happened to them in the book’s “present.” There are a great many characters in this book and the list of Dramatis Personae is helpful in keeping them all straight.

This novel is based on a lesser known historical fact. While it was not common, it did happen that some free blacks owned slaves. It lends a complexity to the slavery narrative – showing how people can be impacted by society’s strictures and how victims of exploitation could become perpetrators of the same system.

This is not a quick and easy read. It feels like being immersed in the life and times of Manchester County, Virginia, in the 1850s. It is an eloquently written condemnation of oppression in any form. This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004.
( )

Another real world event spoken as a novel. But one thing is the author writes without expressing many feelings. More a matter of fact about the lives of slaves. The writing is good, but it feel a bit vacant. ( )