Coleman Hill

by Kim Coleman Foote

“Once in a while, a writer comes along with a brilliance that stops the breath. Kim Coleman Foote is that writer.” —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning author of Red at the Bone “A masterpiece. Brilliant, vivid, heartbreaking, epic, beautiful, raw and true . . . This is the American story.” ―Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less Is Lost
“Kim Coleman Foote has the rare talent of completely immersing you in time and place . . . A sweeping yet intimate family saga.” —Sarah Jessica Parker
Coleman Hill is the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a remarkable, character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations.
In 1916, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post–Civil War South for the “Promised Land” of the North. But soon they learn that even in Vauxhall, New Jersey, black women are mainly hired for domestic work, money is scarce, children don’t progress in school, and black men die young.  Within a few short years, both women’s husbands are dead. Left to navigate this unwelcoming place alone, Celia and Lucy turn to one another for support in raising their children far from home. They become one another’s closest confidantes and, encouraged by their mothers’ friendship, their children’s lives become enmeshed as well. However, with this closeness comes complication. As the children grow into adolescence, two are caught in an impulsive act of impropriety, and Celia and Lucy find themselves at irreconcilable odds over who’s to blame. The ensuing fallout has dire consequences that reverberate through the next two generations of their families. A stunning biomythography—a word coined by the late great writer Audre Lorde— Coleman Hill  draws from the author’s own family legend, historical record, and fervent imagination to create an unforgettable new history. 

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Race, African American, Historical, Family

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 5, 2023

About the author

Kim Coleman Foote is the author of Coleman Hill, named a finalist for the Carol Shields Prize, NAACP Image Award, and Audie Award, and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and more. She was born and raised in New Jersey, where she started writing fiction at the age of seven(ish).

A recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Kim has received additional fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Phillips Exeter Academy, Center for Fiction, and Fulbright, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and Hedgebrook, among others. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2022, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Kweli, Obsidian, and elsewhere.

In her spare time, she can be found dancing salsa, singing in Lingala with her fantasy band, and continuing to research her family's history.

Reviews

[Sarah Jessica Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m thrilled to publish Kim Coleman Foote’s remarkable debut, Coleman Hill. A work of fiction inspired by and interwoven with family history, Kim’s book is a stunning biomythography—a term coined by Audre Lorde for a work that draws from multiple sources to create a modern myth, a new history. In doing so, Coleman Hill delivers a tapestried story—at once intimate and panoramic—of the interweaving of two families across three generations and through eight decades of American history.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story two families who move to New Jersey from the South in 1916 during the Great Migration to escape the Klan and other issues… and to better their lives.
The mothers Lucy and Celia become friends and this is the story of their marriages, children , grandchildren..
A story with the poverty, abuse, alcoholism, infidelities…and it gets to where the cycle doesn’t end..
There are a whole lot of characters its a bit hard to keep track of them.. I really would give this more of a 3.5 rating

Thank you to Netgalley and Zando for the ARC!

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A masterfully crafted multi-generational saga.

Check out my BookTube review on Hello, Bookworm . 📚🐛



Coleman Hill is a biomythography; meaning, it combines real photographs, historical records, the author’s own family history, interviews, oral histories, and the author’s imagination to tell the story of the Coleman family’s great migration from the American south to the north where they settle in New Jersey. The family is keen to leave behind racism and poverty in the post-Civil War South. But in the North, they encounter a host of new bigotries, challenges, and pitfalls.

Woven throughout the book is a friendship between two women whose relationship is tested after their family trees merge.

Skillfully crafted with shifting perspectives. Though it's a multigenerational story, the characters get plenty of time on the page to materialize as fully drawn characters (and there's a family tree at the front of the book to help readers keep track of the family relations).

Highly recommend if you’re a fan of distinct narrative voices or multi-generational family dramas about marginalized communities.

My heartful thanks to the Carol Shields Prize for sending me a finished copy of this book to celebrate the prize.

--

ORIGINAL POST 👇

This book sounds amazing: A multigenerational biomythography that combines history, biography, and myth in the story of a Black family escaping racism and poverty by fleeing north in 1916, only to discover new challenges and bigotries in the "Promised Land." Said to be "a kaleidoscopic novel whose intergenerational arc emerges through a series of miniatures that contain worlds".

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You let yourself get sweet on one for a year or so until he tried to smack you – in public, no less – when you refused his marriage proposal outside the movie theater. You blessed him out and struck his face with the metal edge of your purse, catching him off guard, and kept swinging until his chin got sliced, and he fell to the pavement. Then you wipe off your purse with your hankie, muttering how he made you late for the movie, and it starred Clark Gable, your favorite white man on Earth too.”

This book is a work of fiction, but is based on family legends and actual events in the author’s family. It is enhanced by family photos. It tells the story of Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes and their descendants. Celia and Lucy left the South and landed in Vauxhall, New Jersey. I was attracted to this book because the blurb mentioned Vauxhall. One of my uncles lived there, but I never imagined that it would be featured in a book.

Celia and Lucy were both strong characters, and not completely sympathetic. They had several children, were widowed early and worked all their lives. Nothing dramatic happens in the book. It just tells you what life was like for large, struggling families, and it’s a glimpse of history. Although all of the dialogue had to be invented, it felt very real. The book is told from multiple points of view, including Lucy’s daughter Bertha and Celia’s son Jebbie, who marry. There were so many children and grandchildren that I eventually gave up trying to keep track of them.

I received a free copy of this ebook from the publisher, but I wound up listening to the audiobook. It was narrated by Bahni Turpin and Dion Graham, who were excellent as usual.

[Cheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

Kim Coleman Foote has lovingly woven together the stories of a family. A family connected by blood, but also connected by family history, and the associated memories. A beautifully woven story of the history of the lives of these two families shared over eighty years, with some dark moments.

When Lucy Grimes family and Celia Coleman family grow tired of working so hard so others can reap the benefits of their toil, both families decide to head north and meet on the train headed for New Jersey. Several of their former friends have moved there, and they imagine this new, Donna Reed kind of lifestyle. Staying home, baking, taking care of their children, making dinner. ”The only cotton we’d touch would be our dresses and gloves and the babies’ diapers.”

This isn’t a happy story even after they arrive. They both become widows, and have little in the way of resources, and their lives begin to unravel. There’s a building tension, which essentially destroys their friendship.

Essentially, this is a story that focuses on intergenerational trauma in/of families, and the effect it has on future generations over time, including
domestic violence, alcohol abuse, and poverty.

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, this is a thought provoking debut on generational trauma and the effect it has on past and future generations.


Pub Date: 05 Sept 2023

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Zando Projects, SJP Lit

[Brandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coleman Hill is a biomythography (a new-to-me word) about two families with complicated relationships, that migrate from the South to New Jersey in 1916. Upon arrival, they learn the North isn’t necessarily “the promised land” and work to establish their new lives there. The story spans several decades and generations, and the family members experience both hardship and hurt.

I listened to most of Coleman Hill on audio, as it’s hard to pass on Bahni Turpin and Dion Graham narrating! I appreciated the family tree in the physical book, which not only has a great cover but also high quality pages and photos throughout. I also appreciated reading Kim Coleman Foote’s author note regarding how this story came to be, blending facts and fiction together.

[Elizabeth George]

The author of this family-history-as-novel has created something truly memorable in this re-imagining of her family's history. It coasts through time, from 1916 to 1989, as it traces the lives, loves, triumphs, disappointments, cruelties, pleasures, and survival of the Coleman family and the Grimes family as they transfer their roots in Florida and Alabama to Union, New Jersey, where they establish themselves in a community called Vauxhall. The novel centers around a branch of the family that grows from the marriage of Celia and Jim. Celia is a force to be reckoned with. She lives by "spare the rod/spoil the child" so regular beatings for infractions great and small are a primary feature in the lives of her children and her grandchildren. There is love in the Coleman family, but it can be expressed through violence as well as through tenderness.

The two families merge in the shotgun marriage of Jeb (a Coleman) and Bertha (a Grimes). This marriage fulfills a childhood dream of Bertha's to have Jeb as her husband, but the marriage becomes a nightmare due to Jeb's ties to his mother, the prone-to-violence Celia. It's an enthralling story, beautifully rendered in time and place as we walk in the footsteps of one member of the family after another.

My only criticism of the book has to do with the number of characters (family members all) whose stories are told and must therefore include the various cousins, aunts, and uncles who were part of the Coleman/Grimes world. I found myself repeatedly referring to the family tree provided by the author but even having that tool to help me, it was tough keeping everyone straight with regard to how they were related to one another. I could have used a truncated family tree at the start of each chapter in order to understand better how the people in that chapter fit into the overall picture of the family.

That said, the novel is quite an achievement, and I recommend it.

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kim Coleman Foote has taken the details of her family history with some treasured photos and woven a riveting story about two Black families who migrated from the South to New Jersey (ie: the Promised Land) around 1916 to find factory jobs. They left the abuse of Southern racists behind but carried the memory of violence with them, taking it out on each other in myriad ways.

My favorite things about this story are the family photos and characterizations/relationships. Kim Coleman Foote has done what I would love to do with my own family memories and old photos and fleshed out their stories.

'Maybe the truth is somewhere in between
all that I'm told
and memory'
--Jacqueline Woodson. Brown Girl Dreaming

I received an arc of this new novel from the author and publisher via NetGalley. Many thanks! My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

[Octavia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is very hard for me to rate. Something about it just wasn't for me to enjoy.. 2.5

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is this family memoir or autofiction? I’ve shelved it as both; it’s a blend, one for which Foote borrows the term that Audre Lorde coined for Zami, “biomythography.” Like Edwidge Danticat, Jesmyn Ward and Jacqueline Woodson, Foote draws on personal stories but also invokes overarching narratives of Black migration and struggle. The result is magisterial, a debut novel that feels like oral history and a family scrapbook rolled into one.

During the First World War, the Coleman family were part of a mass exodus from the segregated South to the industrialized North. They hoped for a better life in New Jersey than they’d had under slavery and sharecropping in Alabama and Florida, but in fact many of the author’s ancestors became mired in ill-paid service roles (cleaner, maid, refuse collector) and, ironically, ended up having fewer opportunities for advancement than relatives who stayed behind and enrolled in Black educational institutions in the South.

Like a linked short story collection, the book pulls together 15 vignettes stretching from 1916 to 1989 and told in different styles and voices, including AAVE – I’m reliably informed that the audiobook is wonderful for that reason. A prologue in the first-person plural introduces the women who would become family matriarchs: “We wanted to go to school but couldn’t. The walk was too long. We was needed at home to plant and harvest. And boys could get more outta schooling, folks said, so it was our brothers who went.”

Other sections alternate first and third person. I especially admired the use of the second person for passages from the perspective of Celia Coleman, who develops a dependence on Four Roses whisky after being widowed. An interlude gives two poems from the point-of-view of cotton – crop failure was partly responsible for the initial relocation. There are also black-and-white photographs heading each chapter, and a family tree at the start. When I first heard about this book through its longlisting, the idea of family history told by nine characters sounded overwhelming (and potentially worthy). But the voices are so distinct that there is never a danger of getting lost, and the scenes are so vivid that you cringe from the beatings and cheer when a woman stands up to her meddling mother-in-law. There are echoes and reversals across the generations, as alcoholism and domestic abuse recur.

The core story is about Celia’s nastiness and resistance to her son Jeb’s marriage to Bertha Grimes. Bertha, battered by Jebbie and Celia alike, escapes to a brothel where she works as a cleaner. Celia ends up raising their children, along with another set of grandchildren, earning the nickname “Gra’ Coleman” and a reputation for meanness. (One excellent stand-alone story about the younger generation is titled “How to Kill Gra’ Coleman and Live to Tell About It (c. 1950).”) The inherited trauma is clear, yet I never found the content as bleak here as in A Council of Dolls; Foote weaves in enough counterbalancing lightness and love. There are so many strong female characters – Jeb’s older sisters, Bertha’s younger ones; their daughters – and plenty of humour and spirit despite the sometimes distressing subject matter. The family home, and the objects hoarded there, also play a major role.

It’s difficult to suggest the scope, as large and various as any American family’s history. An author’s note at the end details Foote’s approach – somewhere between “channeling spirits” and fictionalizing – to a novel that was many years in the gestation. I’d particularly recommend Coleman Hill to fans of Ayana Mathis and Toni Morrison. For me, there’s no contest; this should win the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Winter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coleman Foote tells the tale of what is known as the "Generational Curse" in her story she tells of two women Celia and Lucy and their families three generations deep.

You will get to know all about how Coleman Hill and the lives that were entwined.

Coleman-Foote tells how these two women escaped from the south in the early 1900's, for freedom in New Jersey.

Along with this freedom came infidelity, physical abuse, child neglect, child abuse, lack of education and poverty.

Overall the book is extremely interesting, however, you may be very confused due to the many characters and trying to keep track of who belongs to which family member.


Thank you, NetGalley/Kim Coleman Foote/Zando Projects, SJP Lit/ For this eArc in advance for my honest review. My opinions are of my own volition,

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping to love this story more than I did. It’s a fictionalized version of the author’s family history, spanning most of the twentieth century. The genre is apparently now called “biomythography.” The Coleman and Grimes families both migrated north from Alabama and Florida at the same time, around 1916, as part of the Great Migration. They wound up in a town in central New Jersey, Vauxhall (part of Union Township). The two families’ lives became intertwined through the generations, sharing joys and woes (lots of woes) - and intergenerational trauma. Theirs is not a particularly happy story, nor is it easy to read or listen to, due to a lot of domestic violence, in addition to the external violence and indignities so many black families endured, both in the south and the north.

There was so many members of the two families that I got rather lost many times. Chapters are told from different POVs but you have to figure out which person is doing the talking. I listened to the audio version, narrated beautifully by Bahni Turpin (most of the audio) and Dion Graham. I understand that the print version has a number of family photos and I will seek out a print version in my library or a bookstore so I can see them. A family tree might have been helpful in a print version. The author’s note at the end was wonderful, so don’t miss that.

Thank you to NetGalley and SJP Lit for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook. All opinions are my own.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing that Foote is writing a novel based on her own family history adds a level of real richness to this story. You know when she mentions a photograph or memento that it is likely something Foote herself has built the story around, something she has seen and touched. Seeing children grow to become adults, their choices and their lives, knowing that these are true events hits different.

At first I thought this would be more of a multi-generational story but it's really built around a few characters and mostly around a small set of events and how they ripple out and out. It's also, more than anything, about generational trauma, the way Black families struggled to find their own happiness and peace so shortly after slavery. It is unflinching in how it examines domestic violence and child abuse, even as it sees these acts as part of a cycle of violence that families did not even know how to identify much less escape. Foote writes with a lot of compassion, but this is still a difficult book to read where there is not a lot of joy for the characters.

It's a novel in connected stories and points of view, and it doesn't always even out as cohesively as it could, but it's still very strong, full of feeling. An impressive debut.

Bahni Turpin does the audio so you can't go wrong there.

[Cheryl James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading about the Coleman family and all of their descendants. The author did an amazing job giving her family life through facts and imagination.

I could relate to so much of her story with stories of my own family.

This book is very character driven, and I loved everything about the characters and their personal stories.

Great way to keep your family memories alive for the next generations to come.

It's definitely one of my favorite reads for 2024.

[Sidik Fofana · Rating 5 out of 5]

SIX WORD REVIEW: Skillfully blends myth, craft, and history.

[Aubrei K (earlgreypls) · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you liked The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois, Pachinko, or any other multigenerational family saga, Coleman Hill is a MUST READ.

This is a story about 2 different families that moved from Alabama to New Jersey in 1916. The two mothers of these families begin as friends but after their children engage in some unseemly acts together their friendship abruptly ends. We follow these 2 women, their children, their grand children, and their great grand children through the years.

Coleman Hill reminds me of the above books I also adore, but it is also so unique. I did not realize until the end that this is not fully fiction, it is actually what the author calls a biomythography - and it originated as the author was doing research on her own family history. The author attempted to remain true to history by talking with family members, but had to fill in some blanks and take creative liberties to see the story realized in this way.

I could feel this connection the author had with the story and the text. Even before I knew it was a biomythography I kept thinking how intimate it felt. The author wrote these characters with such dearness and love - but not in a way that felt like rose colored glasses. I could tell the author had respect for these women and men; flaws, mistakes, and struggles included, and it shined through in the writing. These characters were all so real and fleshed out and as a reader I felt love and understanding for them even when they were far from perfect. Part of that I think comes from the authors connection, but I also find myself feeling this way when I read multigenerational stories because we have soooo much context by the end.

This story is a great illustration of two Black American families, intergenerational trauma, and struggles with poverty, domestic violence, friendships, parenthood, alcoholism, and more.

I listened to this on audio and the narration was EXCELLENT. My girl Bahni Turpin is the narrator and she is so talented!!

*Thank you to Zando and Netgalley for the free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review*

[Dona's Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review on my blog!



Thank you to the author Kim Coleman Foote, publishers SJP Lit, and NetGalley for an accomanying widget. All views are mine.

Opening quote: People will go after you for combining poverty and abuse. . . . [P] eople will say there’s poverty without abuse, and you will never say anything. . . . This is a story about love, you know that. . . . Because we all love imperfectly. —Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton loc.44

Three (or more) things I loved:

...

5. Brilliant use of the second person, I mean really brilliant 🤌 As Jim raved, jabbing his curled belt at you, you’d stand firm and glare at that mean-faced ranting man your husband had done become, and find yourself wanting your maw’s curse to kick in quick. More so when Jim would yank Jebbie away from you. Cuz instead of hitting you like he probably wanted, Jim took out his wrath on your boy. He’d beat Jebbie with the belt, muttering the same things your maw’s husbands use to say about Johnny. He too soft. He cry. You hovers too much. loc. 773

6. Stars truly strong women. After Jim passed, you kept your promise of having one husband, and your neighbors was surprised when you ain’t remarry. Already got a man of the house, you’d think. Don’t need two. Men seemed to disagree. They kept trying to court you. You let yourself get sweet on one for a year or so until he tried to smack you— in public, no less— when you refused his marriage proposal outside the movie theater. You blessed him out and struck his face with the metal edge of your purse, catching him off guard, and kept swinging until his chin got sliced and he fell to the pavement. Then you wiped off your purse with your hankie, muttering how he made you late for the movie, and it starred Clark Gable, your favorite white man on Earth too. loc. 799

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. It's a little difficult to establish, without some backtracking and such, the timeline of the chapters relative to each other, and how the characters in each section relate to each other. Or to the narrator, which is perhaps most important since some sections are in written in second person. Isthis the point? Being lost in personal history? Lost from it?

Ratings
Cover: 4.2
Concept: 4.7
Character Work: 5
Settings / World Work: 5
Narrative: 5
Pacing: 4
Plot / Logic: 4.3
Ending: 5
Steam: n/a
Style: 5
Overall Rating: 4.69 rounded up to 5

Star Rating: 5
Recommend? Omg Yes!
Finished: August 20 2023

[Harish Namboothiri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coleman Hill is a heart-tugging story, part fact and part fiction, that describes the plight of two families, spanning three generations, and their internal struggles to sustain and redeem. It is also a strong testament to the healing power of time and one of the best books that I read this year.

[☮Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5
Very sad story with much domestic violence, turmoil, and a character or two who were extremely unlikeable. Lots of arguing. The second person perspective is not my favorite, but the author made it work, and in a debut, no less.

[Bonnie Goldberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

MUST READ! This book is a stunning achievement and will - I can only hope - be widely read and discussed. Coleman Foote offers a biomythography, a term coined by Audre Lorde, that weaves myth, history, and biography into a compelling narrative of her family's history. She tells the story the Coleman/Grimes clan and their experiences from the start of the twentieth century through decades of migration, upheaval, segregation, discrimination, poverty and hard labour. The portrait formed is one of tremendous suffering and loss, violence, and resilience. This book stands alongside Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns and is a necessary and needed addition to the cannon of literature itemizing and reflecting upon the challenges - historical and current - of being Black in America. Highly recommended and thank you to Zando books, SJPlit and NetGalley for the privilege of this ARC.

[Glennys Egan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If this were a regular novel it’d be more like a 4.5 but this book deserves a nod for its innovation as a story that lives somewhere between fact and fiction. The photos alongside the manuscript are a great touch. Very many sad, complex truths and a lot of empathy in this book; am glad to have read it.

[Katya · Rating 5 out of 5]

10⭐️

[Liz Hein]

I think this may have worked a lot better for me if I didn’t try it on audio - had a very hard time keeping track of who was who in the generations. That aside, a very powerful story.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coleman Hill is such a unique structured novel; deemed a "Biomythography", author Kim Coleman Foote explores her own heritage and family tree, taking readers on a journey through time and places as we follow in the footsteps of her own family members as they flee the post-Civil War south in the early 20th century and set new roots in Vauxhall, New Jersey.

Across each chapter, Coleman Foote writes from the first-person perspective of a new individual, starting with Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes, two women whose lives and families become intertwined in an unexpected twist of fate. She lays bare the events and people that are part of her family history - the arguments and struggles, the mistakes and moments of shame, as well as their triumphs and joys. At the core of this novel is one family, but it also serves as glimpse into the history of America as a whole, especially the ongoing issues of racism and sexism, and the many changes that occurred over the past century.

I applaud the author for sharing her family's story, as well as her effort to reimagine each person's perspective and emotions, incorporating elements of fact and fiction - something I think many of us have done for our own ancestors. I both appreciated and struggled with the fact that each section is a new character and perspective; Coleman-Foote has done incredible job crafting a new voice and vernacular for each character, but it also made it difficult to connect with each individual given the constant change. Nonetheless, this is a beautifully written piece that serves as a testament to the love and strength of her family.

[Phyllis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley & SJP Lit publisher for a digital advance reader's copy. All comments and opinions are my own.

I was offered the opportunity to read this novel because I had enjoyed Black Cake. Let me warn you not to make the same mistake I did – this is not anything like Black Cake. And even though it does give insight as to what Black people have endured in America (racism, sexism, violence, poverty, abuse), you would also learn these facts by reading The Violin Conspiracy, The Invention of Wings, The Help, The Vanishing Half as well as Black Cake - and I rated all of these 5 stars.

Coleman Hill is a depressing, unrelenting, violent story inspired by the author’s own family legend, historical record, and avid imagination. The book is labeled a “biomythography” – a word coined by the late writer Audre Lorde. Combining family stories, records, and memories, the story is told in the voices of two friends, going back and forth in time, beginning in 1916. There were many characters to keep track of and whether young or old, male or female, mother, father, or child, they all seemed to be stuck in the life of physical, mental and sexual abuse, violence, hunger, alcoholism, and selfish hatred.

I gave myself permission to stop at 50%, as it was just perpetually violent, miserable, wretched and without hope.

[AndiReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Be prepared to be changed by this story.

A saga based in fact, Coleman Hill is the story of two American families whose settled in New Jersey following the Great Migration. Coleman uses her own personal history and photographs to build a consuming and complex story of the matriarchs of early 1900's.

Vauxhall, New Jersey, is a small hamlet or township miles from Newark. This is where Coleman has traced back her heritage. black following the migration of African Americans to the North and West. Each character is brought to life fully by Coleman Foote. Each chapter adds a new layer of information and history of each character. There is great violence and loss within the homes and Coleman Foote artistically includes story lines to

Not since A Color Purple has the history of African Americans in early America been brought to such life. It's a magnum opus of breathtaking and heartbreaking history. This is the fiction book of the year and I challenge you to drop everything and pick up this book!
#ZandoProjects #SJPLit #ColemandHill #KimColemanFoote

[Tish · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
I expected to like this a lot more than I did. Part of the problem was that life was just so hard for so many people, that it made for a depressing read. Another part was that you could see how the hardness of life, the struggles, the indignities, made the people hard. Most of them ended up being pretty unlikeable. In addition, there were just so many characters, in so many places and times, that it was hard to keep track.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-ARC of this book.

[Crystal (Melanatedreader) Forte' · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story of family ties, secrets, love lost, and betrayal! Some parts blew me away! If this is somewhat autobiographical my mouth is on the floor! 😩 I would definitely read a physical copy along with listening to the audio if that’s your preference to avoid possible hiccups in who is related to which family line. Beautifully done.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few times I found the time jumps confusing - I wasn't sure where I was or who I was with - but aside from that, this was a great family saga read with excellent narration from Bahni Turpin.

[Stefani · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a LOT of characters.

I was really engaged with the story, and I’ve never read a biomythography before and it was cool how the author wove her family history into a fictional/nonfiction novel.

The one thing that was tough with this novel was that the point of view switches to different characters, which isn’t the issue, it’s that it would bounce from second person to third person and back to second person, so when it was like “you did this and you did this” I was like you who?? And had to try and figure out whose story we were on and when.

I’d recommend reading a physical/ebook of this to make it easier to track, because on audio it was complicated.

Overall, I thought this was good, hard to read in some areas as there’s a lot of abuse, but very well written aside from the POV bouncing around. I’m not sure why the author chose to switch that around.

Another one to pick up if you like historical novels, and if you want to give a biomythography a try.

Thank you @netgalley and @zandoprojects for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.