Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree by Lillah Lawson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Thoroughly researched and meticulously structured in vivid prose, Lillah Lawson’s Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree brings the Depression-era US south to startling life. Struggling to survive in constant terror of diseases sown by poverty, of racist lynch mobs, and of evangelical threats of eternal punishment; O.T., a white farmer, is driven to alcoholism and Sivvy, a racially mixed aspiring preacher, hounded into madness by devastating grief—one unendurable loss after another. A cinematic exploration of a harsh and beautiful land, Lawson’s novel simultaneously plunges into the caverns of broken hearts, at every turn feeling everything so keenly that to read this book is to be swept along throbbing by currents tumbling and soaring.



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