The Eulogist
by: Terry Gamble
(WARNING: This particular synopsis gets spoilery real quick. So I'm going to white-word the bits that spoil. Highlight if you want to read it completely).
From the author of The Water Dancer and Good Family, an exquisitely crafted novel, set in Ohio in the decades leading to the Civil War, that illuminates the immigrant experience, the injustice of slavery, and the debts human beings owe to one another, witnessed through the endeavors of one Irish-American family.
Cheated out of their family estate in Northern Ireland after the Napoleonic Wars, the Givens family arrives in America in 1819. But in coming to this new land, they have lost nearly everything. Making their way west they settle in Cincinnati, a burgeoning town on the banks of the mighty Ohio River whose rise, like the Givenses’ own, will be fashioned by the colliding forces of Jacksonian populism, religious evangelism, industrial capitalism, and the struggle for emancipation.
After losing their mother in childbirth and their father to a riverboat headed for New Orleans, James, Olivia, and Erasmus Givens must fend for themselves. Ambitious James eventually marries into a prosperous family, builds a successful business, and rises in Cincinnati society. Taken by the spirit and wanderlust, Erasmus becomes an itinerant preacher, finding passion and heartbreak as he seeks God. Independent-minded Olivia, seemingly destined for spinsterhood, enters into a surprising partnership and marriage with Silas Orpheus, a local doctor who spurns social mores.
When her husband suddenly dies from an infection, Olivia travels to his family home in Kentucky, where she meets his estranged brother and encounters the horrors of slavery firsthand. After abetting the escape of one slave, Olivia is forced to confront the status of a young woman named Tilly, another slave owned by Olivia’s brother-in-law. When her attempt to help Tilly ends in disaster, Olivia tracks down Erasmus, who has begun smuggling runaways across the river—the borderline between freedom and slavery.
As the years pass, this family of immigrants initially indifferent to slavery will actively work for its end—performing courageous, often dangerous, occasionally foolhardy acts of moral rectitude that will reverberate through their lives for generations to come. {cover copy}
I agreed to review this book as part of a TLC Book Tours review tour, but this is entirely my unbiased opinion on the book, which was gifted to me.
This book was surprising. I say that because it isn't necessarily the type of book I'd usually choose to read, and I wasn't prepared for how easily I let 200 pages slip by in an afternoon of reading. I was engrossed by the storylines and really interested in what was going to happen. I liked the main character's narration, so I enjoyed watching the story unfold from her point of view. I suppose I would consider this one a slow burn. Like I said, this isn't what I usually read, but the pace was actually a very nice change for me. It took its time, as I think most character driven stories tend to do, with staccato bursts of action or intensity at just the right moment to keep me reading on instead of putting the book down to do some adult thing I probably should have been doing (like laundry). Initially, it was the gorgeous cover that caught my interest. But I'm always trying to avoid pigeonholing myself into only reading a couple genres, so given that the cover copy was intriguing enough for me to risk branching out, I accepted the book for review. I'm glad that I did. It pulled me from my comfort zone, was enjoyable, and kept my interest throughout. There was even a tiny mystery to be worked out by the end, which I liked. I had my suspicions, of course, but it was nice to get them confirmed at the end.
Given it's particular point in time, there is of course a lot to do with slavery. I think this book did a good job of showing, in many circumstances, systemic racism in action. There were points in which the narrator was fully aware of her privilege and the fact that she could distance herself from what was going on for a myriad of reasons, but she acknowledged it, which I thought was important. This, of course, was back in the time of slavery, so it is different from now in some aspects, but I think a lot of her behavior and thoughts and privilege still holds true for today. I believe the book also addressed some of these same problems that face women, especially the women of color, really bringing to the forefront how awful it was for women back then.
Anything untethered washes down this river. {first line}
"Her voice was honeyed and vaguely southern but so lightly touched as to avoid the twang that demands twenty minutes to utter a sentence."
"If there is a God--and like you, I wonder--would He not want us to turn our efforts toward saving each other rather than madly fretting if we ourselves are saved?"
"Bury us deeply. Bury us well."
• well • {last word}
Buy the book here!
(WARNING: This particular synopsis gets spoilery real quick. So I'm going to white-word the bits that spoil. Highlight if you want to read it completely).From the author of The Water Dancer and Good Family, an exquisitely crafted novel, set in Ohio in the decades leading to the Civil War, that illuminates the immigrant experience, the injustice of slavery, and the debts human beings owe to one another, witnessed through the endeavors of one Irish-American family.
Cheated out of their family estate in Northern Ireland after the Napoleonic Wars, the Givens family arrives in America in 1819. But in coming to this new land, they have lost nearly everything. Making their way west they settle in Cincinnati, a burgeoning town on the banks of the mighty Ohio River whose rise, like the Givenses’ own, will be fashioned by the colliding forces of Jacksonian populism, religious evangelism, industrial capitalism, and the struggle for emancipation.
After losing their mother in childbirth and their father to a riverboat headed for New Orleans, James, Olivia, and Erasmus Givens must fend for themselves. Ambitious James eventually marries into a prosperous family, builds a successful business, and rises in Cincinnati society. Taken by the spirit and wanderlust, Erasmus becomes an itinerant preacher, finding passion and heartbreak as he seeks God. Independent-minded Olivia, seemingly destined for spinsterhood, enters into a surprising partnership and marriage with Silas Orpheus, a local doctor who spurns social mores.
When her husband suddenly dies from an infection, Olivia travels to his family home in Kentucky, where she meets his estranged brother and encounters the horrors of slavery firsthand. After abetting the escape of one slave, Olivia is forced to confront the status of a young woman named Tilly, another slave owned by Olivia’s brother-in-law. When her attempt to help Tilly ends in disaster, Olivia tracks down Erasmus, who has begun smuggling runaways across the river—the borderline between freedom and slavery.
As the years pass, this family of immigrants initially indifferent to slavery will actively work for its end—performing courageous, often dangerous, occasionally foolhardy acts of moral rectitude that will reverberate through their lives for generations to come. {cover copy}
I agreed to review this book as part of a TLC Book Tours review tour, but this is entirely my unbiased opinion on the book, which was gifted to me.
This book was surprising. I say that because it isn't necessarily the type of book I'd usually choose to read, and I wasn't prepared for how easily I let 200 pages slip by in an afternoon of reading. I was engrossed by the storylines and really interested in what was going to happen. I liked the main character's narration, so I enjoyed watching the story unfold from her point of view. I suppose I would consider this one a slow burn. Like I said, this isn't what I usually read, but the pace was actually a very nice change for me. It took its time, as I think most character driven stories tend to do, with staccato bursts of action or intensity at just the right moment to keep me reading on instead of putting the book down to do some adult thing I probably should have been doing (like laundry). Initially, it was the gorgeous cover that caught my interest. But I'm always trying to avoid pigeonholing myself into only reading a couple genres, so given that the cover copy was intriguing enough for me to risk branching out, I accepted the book for review. I'm glad that I did. It pulled me from my comfort zone, was enjoyable, and kept my interest throughout. There was even a tiny mystery to be worked out by the end, which I liked. I had my suspicions, of course, but it was nice to get them confirmed at the end.
Given it's particular point in time, there is of course a lot to do with slavery. I think this book did a good job of showing, in many circumstances, systemic racism in action. There were points in which the narrator was fully aware of her privilege and the fact that she could distance herself from what was going on for a myriad of reasons, but she acknowledged it, which I thought was important. This, of course, was back in the time of slavery, so it is different from now in some aspects, but I think a lot of her behavior and thoughts and privilege still holds true for today. I believe the book also addressed some of these same problems that face women, especially the women of color, really bringing to the forefront how awful it was for women back then.
Anything untethered washes down this river. {first line}
"Her voice was honeyed and vaguely southern but so lightly touched as to avoid the twang that demands twenty minutes to utter a sentence."
"If there is a God--and like you, I wonder--would He not want us to turn our efforts toward saving each other rather than madly fretting if we ourselves are saved?"
"Bury us deeply. Bury us well."
• well • {last word}
Buy the book here!
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