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Dabney Family Saga #2
Tap Roots
The novel incorporates (and takes license with) historical facts and persons of the era and weaves them into a love story with some resemblance to Gone with the Wind.
Hardcover
First published June 1, 1942
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About the author
James H. Street
19 books10 followersFrom Wikipedia:
James Howell Street (October 15, 1903 – September 28, 1954) was a U.S. journalist, minister, and writer of Southern historical novels.
Street was born in Lumberton, Mississippi, in 1903. As a teenager, he began working as a journalist for newspapers in Laurel and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. At the age of 20, Street, born a Roman Catholic, decided to become a Baptist minister, attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Howard College. Unsatisfied with his pastoral work after ministering stints in Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama, Street returned to journalism in 1926.
After briefly holding a position with the Pensacola, Florida Journal, Street joined the staff of the Associated Press. The AP position took him to New York, where he began freelance writing fiction. Hired away from the AP by the New York World-Telegram in 1937, Street sold a short story ("A Letter to the Editor") to Cosmopolitan magazine, which caught the eye of film producer David Selznick, who turned it into a hit film, Nothing Sacred. The Broadway musical, Hazel Flagg, was based on his short story, as well as the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis-film Living It Up.
His success allowed him to write full-time, and throughout the 1940s he worked on a five-novel series of historical fiction about the progress of the Dabney family through the 19th century. The Dabney pentology--Oh, Promised Land, Tap Roots, By Valor and Arms, Tomorrow We Reap, and Mingo Dabney--explored classic Southern issues of race and honor, and strongly characterized Street's struggle to reconcile his Southern heritage with his feelings about racial injustice. The series was a critical and popular success, with several of the books being made into feature films. Street modeled characters in his Dabney family saga on Sam Dale, Newt Knight and Greenwood LeFlore.
Street also published two popular novels about boys and dogs, The Biscuit Eater and Good-bye, My Lady, both were turned into movies, and a set of semi-autobiographical novels about a Baptist minister, The Gauntlet and The High Calling, both were bought by Hollywood but never produced.
Street's short stories and articles appeared regularly in Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Holiday.
Street died of a heart attack, in Chapel Hill, N.C., on September 28, 1954, at the age of 50.
James Howell Street (October 15, 1903 – September 28, 1954) was a U.S. journalist, minister, and writer of Southern historical novels.
Street was born in Lumberton, Mississippi, in 1903. As a teenager, he began working as a journalist for newspapers in Laurel and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. At the age of 20, Street, born a Roman Catholic, decided to become a Baptist minister, attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Howard College. Unsatisfied with his pastoral work after ministering stints in Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama, Street returned to journalism in 1926.
After briefly holding a position with the Pensacola, Florida Journal, Street joined the staff of the Associated Press. The AP position took him to New York, where he began freelance writing fiction. Hired away from the AP by the New York World-Telegram in 1937, Street sold a short story ("A Letter to the Editor") to Cosmopolitan magazine, which caught the eye of film producer David Selznick, who turned it into a hit film, Nothing Sacred. The Broadway musical, Hazel Flagg, was based on his short story, as well as the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis-film Living It Up.
His success allowed him to write full-time, and throughout the 1940s he worked on a five-novel series of historical fiction about the progress of the Dabney family through the 19th century. The Dabney pentology--Oh, Promised Land, Tap Roots, By Valor and Arms, Tomorrow We Reap, and Mingo Dabney--explored classic Southern issues of race and honor, and strongly characterized Street's struggle to reconcile his Southern heritage with his feelings about racial injustice. The series was a critical and popular success, with several of the books being made into feature films. Street modeled characters in his Dabney family saga on Sam Dale, Newt Knight and Greenwood LeFlore.
Street also published two popular novels about boys and dogs, The Biscuit Eater and Good-bye, My Lady, both were turned into movies, and a set of semi-autobiographical novels about a Baptist minister, The Gauntlet and The High Calling, both were bought by Hollywood but never produced.
Street's short stories and articles appeared regularly in Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Holiday.
Street died of a heart attack, in Chapel Hill, N.C., on September 28, 1954, at the age of 50.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 26, 2017
I read Tap Roots hoping for an American story about the struggle for freedom and also for an always-timely memorial to Southern Unionism. I was partly rewarded by passages like this one:
"Never was a stranger assembly gathered.... Scots and Irish, English and Germans, Cajuns and two Negroes -- a tiny melting pot that must be tried by fire to prove to mankind that fire and blood can melt all races and blend them into a new being.... The scum of the South was represented. Fire can purify scum. The illiterate, the suspicious -- they were there, too. Deserters and draft dodgers, abolitionists and Unionists -- five hundred men with nothing in common except a burning fervor for freedom as they understood freedom."
(That last phrase, "as they understood freedom", is pretty ominous, especially in a story about the Civil War South.)
For the most part, however, Tap Roots is a shower of sore loser's bile. No love for freedom can drown out the hatred for the Yankee. The bitter tone is familiar, and its purpose is to deny the moral high ground: The South was wrong, but the North could not have been right. The novel brims with assertions that Lincoln was a mere schemer, that Northern wage slaves were worse off than Southern chattel slaves, and that Southern abolitionists were better than Northern ones. The latter group still garners the vast majority of author James Street's ire. The idea that his protagonists, Southern abolitionists, would have found common cause with their Northern counterparts, is mocked: "Hoab said, 'Some of our Tennessee members think we should join forces with the Yankee abolitionists. They say there is strength in union.' 'They are loonies,' Keith said. 'The Northern abolitionists are fools and we know it. Somebody ought to shoot Sumner. He's doing our cause more harm than John Brown.'" In fact, nobody comes in for nastier abuse in this book than Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) and Henry Ward Beecher. Street's ire is that of the proud man (or child), directed against those who would expose his faults -- faults of which he is well aware, which he insists he will address in his own sweet time, but which no one can raise a peep about. I am reminded that Indian nationalism only took shape after the British banned the burning of widows in India. For fueling aggrievement, nothing beats being wrong.
Occasionally, Street's bitterness attains Marxist dimensions, as in:
"'I know and you know that slavery is not the root of this situation. We are going through another phase of our Revolution. Of course, slavery is wrong. It's stupid. It's as wrong to own a man as it is to work a child fourteen hours a day as they do in Massachusetts. But that's not the point. the real clash is between artisans and farmers, the age-old clash of manufacturers and people who build up an agrarian culture, such as the South's.'"
and:
"'Queen Victoria's antagonism for slavery has nothing to do with it. The English merchants who really rule that land will brush her aside if necessary.'"
Although at first it seemed odd that Street should take such a tone, I soon saw that it made sense. The theory of historical materialism is fully in keeping with the bitter Southerner's project of removing all morality and idealism from history because he can claim none (If he doesn't have it, then no one else can have it). The idea that money makes the world go around is the common coin of all bitter minds.
"Never was a stranger assembly gathered.... Scots and Irish, English and Germans, Cajuns and two Negroes -- a tiny melting pot that must be tried by fire to prove to mankind that fire and blood can melt all races and blend them into a new being.... The scum of the South was represented. Fire can purify scum. The illiterate, the suspicious -- they were there, too. Deserters and draft dodgers, abolitionists and Unionists -- five hundred men with nothing in common except a burning fervor for freedom as they understood freedom."
(That last phrase, "as they understood freedom", is pretty ominous, especially in a story about the Civil War South.)
For the most part, however, Tap Roots is a shower of sore loser's bile. No love for freedom can drown out the hatred for the Yankee. The bitter tone is familiar, and its purpose is to deny the moral high ground: The South was wrong, but the North could not have been right. The novel brims with assertions that Lincoln was a mere schemer, that Northern wage slaves were worse off than Southern chattel slaves, and that Southern abolitionists were better than Northern ones. The latter group still garners the vast majority of author James Street's ire. The idea that his protagonists, Southern abolitionists, would have found common cause with their Northern counterparts, is mocked: "Hoab said, 'Some of our Tennessee members think we should join forces with the Yankee abolitionists. They say there is strength in union.' 'They are loonies,' Keith said. 'The Northern abolitionists are fools and we know it. Somebody ought to shoot Sumner. He's doing our cause more harm than John Brown.'" In fact, nobody comes in for nastier abuse in this book than Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) and Henry Ward Beecher. Street's ire is that of the proud man (or child), directed against those who would expose his faults -- faults of which he is well aware, which he insists he will address in his own sweet time, but which no one can raise a peep about. I am reminded that Indian nationalism only took shape after the British banned the burning of widows in India. For fueling aggrievement, nothing beats being wrong.
Occasionally, Street's bitterness attains Marxist dimensions, as in:
"'I know and you know that slavery is not the root of this situation. We are going through another phase of our Revolution. Of course, slavery is wrong. It's stupid. It's as wrong to own a man as it is to work a child fourteen hours a day as they do in Massachusetts. But that's not the point. the real clash is between artisans and farmers, the age-old clash of manufacturers and people who build up an agrarian culture, such as the South's.'"
and:
"'Queen Victoria's antagonism for slavery has nothing to do with it. The English merchants who really rule that land will brush her aside if necessary.'"
Although at first it seemed odd that Street should take such a tone, I soon saw that it made sense. The theory of historical materialism is fully in keeping with the bitter Southerner's project of removing all morality and idealism from history because he can claim none (If he doesn't have it, then no one else can have it). The idea that money makes the world go around is the common coin of all bitter minds.
November 29, 2013
The book is based on the true story of the "free state of Jones"' in which the farmers and workmen of this county in Mississippi decide to succeed from both the United States and the Confederacy. In this part of the South there were few if any plantations, most people worked their own farms and held no slaves. They strongly resented being required to " fight a rich man's war." The majority of settlers were also of Scots-Irish decent and did not believe in slavery, so they decided to form their on Republic of free men. I have ancestors who were in this group and I am proud of them taking a stand that helped their families. I find the sentiments in this book very similar to those in Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.
July 8, 2020
This book was a pretty good historical fiction. It dealt with antebellum South and the Civil War in a reasonably just way. The characters were interesting but the female characters lacked depth. The fight scenes were too drawn out for my taste. Overall, a nice book to read.
January 28, 2012
Sprawling saga in the vein of Gone with the Wind, though not as successfully executed. Later made into an entertaining film starring Susan Hayward.
March 2, 2017
Good novel
James Street write an action packed historical novel that I read in my youth. I have enjoyed reading it again after fifty years.
James Street write an action packed historical novel that I read in my youth. I have enjoyed reading it again after fifty years.
Read
October 31, 2010Awesome
May 22, 2022
I stumbled upon this book after having seen a reference to it in an old McClung Family Association Journal from 1987. The author, James Street, based the character Keith Alexander on Alexander Keith McClung (1811-1855), who happens to be my 1st cousin 6X removed (we share the same 6th great-grandfather). He was known as the Black Knight of Vengeance, fought many duels, was a heavy drinker, and fought under Jefferson Davis in the Mexican War. He was also a lawyer, poet and orator.
The book covers a rather obscure chapter in Civil War history, that is the secession of Jones County, Mississippi from the Confederacy! All this is very interesting, but the motivation and agenda of the author seems to be to gain the moral high ground from both the north and the south (the north was full of rabid abolitionists, and the south was pushing a civil war that would be fought for slavery, but fought by poor, non-slave owners). The women characters were one dimensional and unbelievable. What woman would sleep with 2 different men so close together in time? One was her ex-fiance, and brother-in-law, and the other the rake, Keith Alexander. Also, there are frequent discussions about the size of women's breasts between the characters (rose buds, floppies or cabbages). First of all, would characters in 1860 openly talk about this? And, really, are these the only choices?? I had a hard time getting past these silly conversations, my visualizations of them (??Cabbages??)and the preposterous sleeping about by the main female character.
The book covers a rather obscure chapter in Civil War history, that is the secession of Jones County, Mississippi from the Confederacy! All this is very interesting, but the motivation and agenda of the author seems to be to gain the moral high ground from both the north and the south (the north was full of rabid abolitionists, and the south was pushing a civil war that would be fought for slavery, but fought by poor, non-slave owners). The women characters were one dimensional and unbelievable. What woman would sleep with 2 different men so close together in time? One was her ex-fiance, and brother-in-law, and the other the rake, Keith Alexander. Also, there are frequent discussions about the size of women's breasts between the characters (rose buds, floppies or cabbages). First of all, would characters in 1860 openly talk about this? And, really, are these the only choices?? I had a hard time getting past these silly conversations, my visualizations of them (??Cabbages??)and the preposterous sleeping about by the main female character.
February 24, 2018
Another wonderful and exciting story in the continuing saga of The Dabney’s. I found nothing not to love about Tap Roots. It continues with Sam Dabney still living, but Hoab as the master of the family. Lots of good history and romance. I’ve ordered the next books in this series. I’ll miss this family when the saga ends. Highly recommended.
March 18, 2019
Thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Perhaps the writing is just simpler, but it was a quick read and had some truly great phrasing and well defined characters. I picked it up having watched "Free State of Jones" and doing a bit of digging on th subject. i must say that I was entertained by an entirely different story.
September 3, 2018
The 2me book is as go, od as the first
Enjoyed this saga. although it, too, is not politically correct either. I leave it up to future readers to make up their own minds about it.
Enjoyed this saga. although it, too, is not politically correct either. I leave it up to future readers to make up their own minds about it.
May 10, 2015
A good yarn, fine and free-flowing …
I was especially appreciative of the historical matter. It concerns one county in Mississippi which, when that state seceded from the Union, in turn seceded from the state. The county was dominated by an anti-slavery family and became a center for all men who did not want to fight the Union, or were openly and violently Abolitionist, or who simply wanted to get away from the entire struggle. The essential drama lies in the resolute desperation of that one little valley taking arms against the entire Confederacy surrounding it. Street acknowledges the fact that hardly a fifth of the Southern facilities held slaves, and many of them held but a few. We hear a truer account of the factional differences in the south and the strong anti-slavery convictions of many Southerners, and the wavering of whole states.
There is plenty of heroism in this book and easily the most exciting part is the invasion of the confederate soldiers, and the wild, often ignorant, defense of the little army of native farmers, Irish laborers, and Cajuns.
Fascinating history with a clever mingling of personal stories. Thank you for this absorbing entertainment Mr. Street.
I was especially appreciative of the historical matter. It concerns one county in Mississippi which, when that state seceded from the Union, in turn seceded from the state. The county was dominated by an anti-slavery family and became a center for all men who did not want to fight the Union, or were openly and violently Abolitionist, or who simply wanted to get away from the entire struggle. The essential drama lies in the resolute desperation of that one little valley taking arms against the entire Confederacy surrounding it. Street acknowledges the fact that hardly a fifth of the Southern facilities held slaves, and many of them held but a few. We hear a truer account of the factional differences in the south and the strong anti-slavery convictions of many Southerners, and the wavering of whole states.
There is plenty of heroism in this book and easily the most exciting part is the invasion of the confederate soldiers, and the wild, often ignorant, defense of the little army of native farmers, Irish laborers, and Cajuns.
Fascinating history with a clever mingling of personal stories. Thank you for this absorbing entertainment Mr. Street.
February 10, 2015
This is a good yarn, fine and free-flowing.
I was especially appreciative of the historical matter of this book. It concerns one county in Mississippi which, when that state seceded from the Union, in turn seceded from the state. The county was dominated by an anti-slavery family and became a center for all men who did not want to fight the Union, or were openly and violently Abolitionist, or who simply wanted to get away from the entire struggle. The essential drama lies in the resolute desperation of that one little valley taking arms against the entire Confederacy surrounding it. Street acknowledges the fact that hardly a fifth of the Southern facilities held slaves, and many of them held but a few. We hear a truer account of the factional differences in the south and the strong anti-slavery convictions of many Southerners, and the wavering of whole states.
There is plenty of heroism in this book and easily the most exciting part is the invasion of the confederate soldiers, and the wild, often ignorant, defense of the little army of native farmers, Irish laborers, and Cajuns.
Fascinating history with a clever mingling of personal stories. Thank you for this absorbing entertainment Mr. Street.
I was especially appreciative of the historical matter of this book. It concerns one county in Mississippi which, when that state seceded from the Union, in turn seceded from the state. The county was dominated by an anti-slavery family and became a center for all men who did not want to fight the Union, or were openly and violently Abolitionist, or who simply wanted to get away from the entire struggle. The essential drama lies in the resolute desperation of that one little valley taking arms against the entire Confederacy surrounding it. Street acknowledges the fact that hardly a fifth of the Southern facilities held slaves, and many of them held but a few. We hear a truer account of the factional differences in the south and the strong anti-slavery convictions of many Southerners, and the wavering of whole states.
There is plenty of heroism in this book and easily the most exciting part is the invasion of the confederate soldiers, and the wild, often ignorant, defense of the little army of native farmers, Irish laborers, and Cajuns.
Fascinating history with a clever mingling of personal stories. Thank you for this absorbing entertainment Mr. Street.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews