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Thomas and Beal in the Midi
A young interracial couple escapes from Maryland to France in 1892, living first among artists in the vibrant Latin Quarter of Paris, and then beginning a new life as winemakers in the rugged countryside of the Languedoc
Twenty-three years after the publication of his acclaimed novel Mason's Retreat and six years after The Right-Hand Shore, Christopher Tilghman returns to the saga of the Mason and Bayly families in Thomas and Beal in the Midi.
Thomas Bayly and his wife, Beal, have run away to France, escaping the laws and prejudices of post-Reconstruction America. The drama in this richly textured novel proceeds in two settings: first in Paris, and then in the Languedoc, where Thomas and Beal begin a new life as winemakers. Beal, indelible, beautiful, and poised, enchants everyone she meets in this strange new land, including a gaggle of artists in the Latin Quarter when they first arrive in Paris. Later, when they've moved to the beautiful and rugged Languedoc, she is torn between the freedoms she experienced in Paris and the return to the farm life she thought she had left behind in America. A moving and delicate portrait of a highly unusual marriage, Thomas and Beal in the Midi is a radiant work of deep insight and peerless imagination about the central dilemma of American history--the legacy of slavery and the Civil War--that explores the many ways that the past has an enduring hold over the present.
Twenty-three years after the publication of his acclaimed novel Mason's Retreat and six years after The Right-Hand Shore, Christopher Tilghman returns to the saga of the Mason and Bayly families in Thomas and Beal in the Midi.
Thomas Bayly and his wife, Beal, have run away to France, escaping the laws and prejudices of post-Reconstruction America. The drama in this richly textured novel proceeds in two settings: first in Paris, and then in the Languedoc, where Thomas and Beal begin a new life as winemakers. Beal, indelible, beautiful, and poised, enchants everyone she meets in this strange new land, including a gaggle of artists in the Latin Quarter when they first arrive in Paris. Later, when they've moved to the beautiful and rugged Languedoc, she is torn between the freedoms she experienced in Paris and the return to the farm life she thought she had left behind in America. A moving and delicate portrait of a highly unusual marriage, Thomas and Beal in the Midi is a radiant work of deep insight and peerless imagination about the central dilemma of American history--the legacy of slavery and the Civil War--that explores the many ways that the past has an enduring hold over the present.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published April 16, 2019
9 people are currently reading
1175 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Tilghman
25 books63 followersChristopher Tilghman is the author of two short-story collections, In a Father’s Place, and The Way People Run, and three novels, The Right-Hand Shore, Mason’s Retreat and Roads of the Heart. Currently the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, he and his wife, the writer Caroline Preston, live in Charlottesville, Virginia.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/christ...
http://us.macmillan.com/author/christ...
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 25, 2019
Thomas (white, 21 years old) and Beal (black, 19 years old), grew up together on Mason's Retreat in Maryland. They fall in love and marry, but unfortunately for them, that's illegal in 1892. They flee to France to start a new life, in particular Paris, and figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. Race is not the problem in France, as in the American South. They are very young, their marriage is untested, and neither of them have any experience with the greater world. So you might say that Paris is quite an experience for both of them. They eventually buy a vineyard in the South of France and begin a family. The book ends 40 years later, with Thomas thinking back over the years of their marriage.
Now, anyone that has been in a marriage or relationship that has lasted a while, knows that my plot recap is greatly simplified. No marriage is just between two people. There are family, friends, society, hopes, dreams, desires..........
"Time has a way of making life seem so compressed, of collapsing thousands of miles into the dimensions of a single room, the distance between the armoire and the bedpost, and isn't that the mercy of it?"
The story of a marriage, beautifully written.
Now, anyone that has been in a marriage or relationship that has lasted a while, knows that my plot recap is greatly simplified. No marriage is just between two people. There are family, friends, society, hopes, dreams, desires..........
"Time has a way of making life seem so compressed, of collapsing thousands of miles into the dimensions of a single room, the distance between the armoire and the bedpost, and isn't that the mercy of it?"
The story of a marriage, beautifully written.
April 16, 2019
This novel moves at the languid pace of a summer day in the South of France. Its reflections on love, friendship, loyalty and fidelity are presented by the author almost as questions to the reader to be pondered for herself, and then left to the characters to make their own choices. I came to love Thomas and Beal, not as heroes, but as flawed individuals who were open to change in themselves and each other.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
July 27, 2019
I enjoyed this very much, even without the first two books. This one just jumped off the New Books shelf into my hands—-Historic France? Yes, please!
July 1, 2021
What happens when a biracial couple escape racism in America for France in the late 19th century? (Paris and the Languedoc region; 1892 to 1937): The Pink Dress, the alluring painting on the cover of Christopher Tilghman’s new novel, was painted by French artist Frédéric Bazille just twenty years before Thomas and Beal in the Midi begins.
Thomas Bayly and Beal Terrell are characters from two of Tilghman’s earlier novels set on the Eastern shore of Maryland: Mason’s Retreat and The Right-Hand Shore. Adeptly weaving in the couple’s backstory on Thomas’ family estate and farm on the Chesapeake Bay, this novel reads as a stand-alone.
Seductively alive, the plot centers on finding “a place to call home” after two childhood friends fall in love and marry illegally since interracial marriages were banned in Maryland back then. (Shockingly, Maryland didn’t repeal the law until the late ‘60s civil rights movement.)
Thomas is twenty-one, white, and privileged; Beal is nineteen, black, and her ancestors were slaves. She and her mother were servants at Mason’s Retreat. When Thomas and Beal wed, they fled to France during the Belle Époque era, when the country was at peace and the arts flourished. The elegance of the prose; Beal’s elegance; Thomas’ dignified handling of Beal’s awakening; and the revolutionary spirit of their marriage suit the Beautiful Age.
A stark contrast to the history of slavery in the bucolic and coastal Chesapeake Bay two hours outside Washington, DC known for its world-class sailing and blue crabs. But this region was also home to slaves and activists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.
Christopher Tilghman grew up here too and his family’s roots also go back to the 1600s, so it’s not surprising he was deeply affected by the history and landscape, infused in his writings.
Opening with another character – Madame Lucy Bernault – summoned by Thomas’ older, “austere,” sister Mary who’d been a student of the nun, to watch over Thomas and Beal, she’s waiting in Le Havre, a major port city, to meet the young couple when they disembark from their luxury ocean liner, the SS La Touraine.
In the opening line, there’s a designation after Bernault’s name: RSCJ. The Catholic Society of the Sacred Heart was founded in France in the 1800s. When Thomas and Beal immigrated to France, the “Mother House” was located in Paris. Educating poor girls was (is) its mission; Hôtel Biron, the site of their boarding school, today houses the sculpture museum, Musée Rodin.
The society’s missionary boarding schools spread to many countries, but the specific reference on page one to Lucy’s Louisiana experience teaching there introduces the religious order’s disturbing connection to slavery, bridging the gap between then and today’s reparation urgings.
As Sister Lucy watches the passengers walk down the gangplank, she first sees a chained black man, a prisoner, and thinks: “In all her years in America, the horror of American slavery had never left her.” The concept and ideal of equality are a big draw. Her intentions are full of grace and love. Throughout the novel, the couple’s friendship and gratitude for all she does is heartening. Highlighted here, in addition to the slavery messaging, as an example of the impressive research the author has fleshed out into Thomas and Beal’s story of love.
The nun is the first of many characters to behold Beal’s “solid beauty.” The “delicacy of her hands and fingers.” Her “strikingly pale eyes.” How “her dark skin was absolutely flawless.” Her tall height and wide shoulders. When she also spots an “extremely tall African man,” she humorously wonders whether “everyone in this story is a giant?” Indeed, this is a giant tale but that’s not the question she would have asked had she been on the ship and seen how the well-dressed, well-spoken, domineering man eyed Beal.
Monsieur Diallo Touré is from Senegal, “where our people are rising” he tells Beal. A diplomat in the French National Assembly, part of France’s Parliament, he gets under Beal’s skin for the arrogant assumptions he makes about her white husband. Like so much that goes through Beal’s mind, she keeps this incident secret, assuming this will be the last she’ll see of this charismatic man. But it’s not.
On page 39 of this nearly 400-page novel, Sister Lucy utters prescient words that drive Beal’s coming-of-age story:
Beal’s eyes are just beginning to open in a city famous for doing that. She loves the fashions that suit her elegance and beauty; early on befriends two women artists who are copyists at the Louvre, so she spends time there observing and recording her thoughts in a journal – Thomas’ idea to help her grow, also helping her fit right in the Latin Quarter where Lucy found their apartment and where artists and writers hang out.
Initially, Beal wants nothing to do with the American artists, but they’re a persistent bunch. Interestingly, during artist Bazille’s early years he hung out with pioneering artists there that led to Impressionism.
How did Tilghman find such a perfect image for his novel? Did he see the painting at the Musée d’Orsay, where it hangs?
Racism in Paris isn’t seen. The artists Beal encounters see the beauty of her “coloring,” not that she’s “colored.” Would she have been treated differently if she wasn’t beautiful?
Tilghman’s evocative and atmospheric storytelling feels old-school in the sense that he takes his time to tell it in long-flowing, often flowery prose.
Beal’s beauty is both a blessing and a curse, testing her. Male artists crave drawing and painting her; two compete for her as their muse. One is a Jewish man, Arthur Kravitz, who’s moody and angry, reminding us this was the time when the Dreyfus scandal consumed France. Again, Tighlman finds a way to bring dark history about human rights into his love story.
Do you believe there can only be one “true love, in life and literature”? The novel asks us to consider this question as both Beal and Thomas become conflicted. Thomas’s adoration and love translates into quiet patience as he wants Beal to figure out who she is and what she wants, aware she hasn’t tasted life and freedom to understand the depths of love Sister Lucy spoke of.
Meanwhile, he experiences a different type of attraction, also quiet about it, meeting and befriending a very helpful Irish bookseller, Eileen, in a Paris bookstore with a comprehensive collection of English-language books on French industries. Spending his days there, Eileen’s assistance is pivotal, sparking the second part of the novel set in the Midi: a cultural geographic region in the south of France bordering Spain, where the language spoken is called Occitan.
With roughly 100 pages remaining, the author reveals a spoiler about the fate of Thomas and Beal in the Languedoc. I don’t intend to do that, perhaps my only quip with this thoughtful novel. Suffice it to say it shows the impact of Thomas’ kinship with his Chesapeake heritage.
The novel reflects the same effect on the author, also an English professor and Director of the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing Program. Tilghman acknowledges the resources he used to inform this gorgeous novel. No surprise it took years to craft.
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
Thomas Bayly and Beal Terrell are characters from two of Tilghman’s earlier novels set on the Eastern shore of Maryland: Mason’s Retreat and The Right-Hand Shore. Adeptly weaving in the couple’s backstory on Thomas’ family estate and farm on the Chesapeake Bay, this novel reads as a stand-alone.
Seductively alive, the plot centers on finding “a place to call home” after two childhood friends fall in love and marry illegally since interracial marriages were banned in Maryland back then. (Shockingly, Maryland didn’t repeal the law until the late ‘60s civil rights movement.)
Thomas is twenty-one, white, and privileged; Beal is nineteen, black, and her ancestors were slaves. She and her mother were servants at Mason’s Retreat. When Thomas and Beal wed, they fled to France during the Belle Époque era, when the country was at peace and the arts flourished. The elegance of the prose; Beal’s elegance; Thomas’ dignified handling of Beal’s awakening; and the revolutionary spirit of their marriage suit the Beautiful Age.
A stark contrast to the history of slavery in the bucolic and coastal Chesapeake Bay two hours outside Washington, DC known for its world-class sailing and blue crabs. But this region was also home to slaves and activists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.
Christopher Tilghman grew up here too and his family’s roots also go back to the 1600s, so it’s not surprising he was deeply affected by the history and landscape, infused in his writings.
Opening with another character – Madame Lucy Bernault – summoned by Thomas’ older, “austere,” sister Mary who’d been a student of the nun, to watch over Thomas and Beal, she’s waiting in Le Havre, a major port city, to meet the young couple when they disembark from their luxury ocean liner, the SS La Touraine.
In the opening line, there’s a designation after Bernault’s name: RSCJ. The Catholic Society of the Sacred Heart was founded in France in the 1800s. When Thomas and Beal immigrated to France, the “Mother House” was located in Paris. Educating poor girls was (is) its mission; Hôtel Biron, the site of their boarding school, today houses the sculpture museum, Musée Rodin.
The society’s missionary boarding schools spread to many countries, but the specific reference on page one to Lucy’s Louisiana experience teaching there introduces the religious order’s disturbing connection to slavery, bridging the gap between then and today’s reparation urgings.
As Sister Lucy watches the passengers walk down the gangplank, she first sees a chained black man, a prisoner, and thinks: “In all her years in America, the horror of American slavery had never left her.” The concept and ideal of equality are a big draw. Her intentions are full of grace and love. Throughout the novel, the couple’s friendship and gratitude for all she does is heartening. Highlighted here, in addition to the slavery messaging, as an example of the impressive research the author has fleshed out into Thomas and Beal’s story of love.
The nun is the first of many characters to behold Beal’s “solid beauty.” The “delicacy of her hands and fingers.” Her “strikingly pale eyes.” How “her dark skin was absolutely flawless.” Her tall height and wide shoulders. When she also spots an “extremely tall African man,” she humorously wonders whether “everyone in this story is a giant?” Indeed, this is a giant tale but that’s not the question she would have asked had she been on the ship and seen how the well-dressed, well-spoken, domineering man eyed Beal.
Monsieur Diallo Touré is from Senegal, “where our people are rising” he tells Beal. A diplomat in the French National Assembly, part of France’s Parliament, he gets under Beal’s skin for the arrogant assumptions he makes about her white husband. Like so much that goes through Beal’s mind, she keeps this incident secret, assuming this will be the last she’ll see of this charismatic man. But it’s not.
On page 39 of this nearly 400-page novel, Sister Lucy utters prescient words that drive Beal’s coming-of-age story:
“Your love will be tested; otherwise, how will you ever know its depths? None of us knows what lies ahead of us. But you are brave and in love, and perhaps that’s all you will need in the end.”
Beal’s eyes are just beginning to open in a city famous for doing that. She loves the fashions that suit her elegance and beauty; early on befriends two women artists who are copyists at the Louvre, so she spends time there observing and recording her thoughts in a journal – Thomas’ idea to help her grow, also helping her fit right in the Latin Quarter where Lucy found their apartment and where artists and writers hang out.
Initially, Beal wants nothing to do with the American artists, but they’re a persistent bunch. Interestingly, during artist Bazille’s early years he hung out with pioneering artists there that led to Impressionism.
How did Tilghman find such a perfect image for his novel? Did he see the painting at the Musée d’Orsay, where it hangs?
Racism in Paris isn’t seen. The artists Beal encounters see the beauty of her “coloring,” not that she’s “colored.” Would she have been treated differently if she wasn’t beautiful?
Tilghman’s evocative and atmospheric storytelling feels old-school in the sense that he takes his time to tell it in long-flowing, often flowery prose.
Beal’s beauty is both a blessing and a curse, testing her. Male artists crave drawing and painting her; two compete for her as their muse. One is a Jewish man, Arthur Kravitz, who’s moody and angry, reminding us this was the time when the Dreyfus scandal consumed France. Again, Tighlman finds a way to bring dark history about human rights into his love story.
Do you believe there can only be one “true love, in life and literature”? The novel asks us to consider this question as both Beal and Thomas become conflicted. Thomas’s adoration and love translates into quiet patience as he wants Beal to figure out who she is and what she wants, aware she hasn’t tasted life and freedom to understand the depths of love Sister Lucy spoke of.
Meanwhile, he experiences a different type of attraction, also quiet about it, meeting and befriending a very helpful Irish bookseller, Eileen, in a Paris bookstore with a comprehensive collection of English-language books on French industries. Spending his days there, Eileen’s assistance is pivotal, sparking the second part of the novel set in the Midi: a cultural geographic region in the south of France bordering Spain, where the language spoken is called Occitan.
With roughly 100 pages remaining, the author reveals a spoiler about the fate of Thomas and Beal in the Languedoc. I don’t intend to do that, perhaps my only quip with this thoughtful novel. Suffice it to say it shows the impact of Thomas’ kinship with his Chesapeake heritage.
The novel reflects the same effect on the author, also an English professor and Director of the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing Program. Tilghman acknowledges the resources he used to inform this gorgeous novel. No surprise it took years to craft.
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
March 18, 2019
This took me a while to get into it, but I ended up really loving it. It’s set in France in the 1890s; the story of a young interracial couple who leave the USA because their marriage is illegal. All the characters are well drawn and, their interior lives seemed so complete. A pleasure to slow down with, and sink into.
August 19, 2019
Christopher Tilghman’s Thomas and Beal in the Midi, is an engaging novel that hasn’t generated the excitement it deserves — a rich if uneven work, seven years in the making, from one of America’s finest living writers.
In the 1890s, with the hope of living less uncomfortably away from the U.S., an interracial American couple relocates s to France. Their story — a love story with bumps (probably the only believable kind) — is compelling from beginning to end.
At a time when skimpiness prevails in much of our fiction, Tilghman’s work is replete and gorgeous with detail. Here’s a passage that comes after black farm girl Beal has been visiting the Louvre almost daily for a number of months:
“In all Bel’s months at the Louvre, she had never picked up a paintbrush, which she had no interest ion doing. More and more it was clothes she thought about, wrote about in her journals, and toward the end of her Louvre visits it was the dresses, the simple Roman tunics and the Elizabethan monsters that she concentrated on. She liked to think of the painters painstakingly rendering the textures and patterns as if they were weaving them anew.” (That last sentence came back to me last week while I stood in front of John Currin’s remarkable painting Stamford After Brunch in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.)
I occasionally lost my faith in Tilghman’s grasp of his characters (a problem that can occur even while reading a masterpiece), but the book survived my doubts and held me until the end.
This is the third novel in a trilogy. Some critics have suggested that readers unfamiliar with the two earlier novels may experience confusion. I’ve read the earlier novels, but I have the problems with memory common to my age group, and I don’t at all agree with those critics. Where backstory is necessary, Tilghman provides it.
The book has been handsomely produced, at least by current standards, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in a cream binding with a dust jacket featuring smartly selected typography and a period painting by Jean Frederic Bazille.
I’ve read everything Tilghman has published, including his memorable short stories, and I look forward to whatever he’s next going to gift us with.
In the 1890s, with the hope of living less uncomfortably away from the U.S., an interracial American couple relocates s to France. Their story — a love story with bumps (probably the only believable kind) — is compelling from beginning to end.
At a time when skimpiness prevails in much of our fiction, Tilghman’s work is replete and gorgeous with detail. Here’s a passage that comes after black farm girl Beal has been visiting the Louvre almost daily for a number of months:
“In all Bel’s months at the Louvre, she had never picked up a paintbrush, which she had no interest ion doing. More and more it was clothes she thought about, wrote about in her journals, and toward the end of her Louvre visits it was the dresses, the simple Roman tunics and the Elizabethan monsters that she concentrated on. She liked to think of the painters painstakingly rendering the textures and patterns as if they were weaving them anew.” (That last sentence came back to me last week while I stood in front of John Currin’s remarkable painting Stamford After Brunch in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.)
I occasionally lost my faith in Tilghman’s grasp of his characters (a problem that can occur even while reading a masterpiece), but the book survived my doubts and held me until the end.
This is the third novel in a trilogy. Some critics have suggested that readers unfamiliar with the two earlier novels may experience confusion. I’ve read the earlier novels, but I have the problems with memory common to my age group, and I don’t at all agree with those critics. Where backstory is necessary, Tilghman provides it.
The book has been handsomely produced, at least by current standards, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in a cream binding with a dust jacket featuring smartly selected typography and a period painting by Jean Frederic Bazille.
I’ve read everything Tilghman has published, including his memorable short stories, and I look forward to whatever he’s next going to gift us with.
May 9, 2019
During a rough time of my life, Thomas and Beal in the Midi came my way. It's as though Thomas and Beal's challenges were the cleansing tonic to my own insecurities about romance and marriage. To say how it did would be spoilers for the novel, so I won't get into specifics. I'll only say that the sober acceptance of a tried marriage moved me in ways I never thought it could. How sweet that it did so without scorn or bitterness. So peaceful and so unexpected.
Well, Tilghman knows how to keep me entranced. There's no war, there's no acts of incredible violence to pull the drama. Just the simple tug and pull of daily life. And that sucks me into the world by the first chapter. From the change in settings to the mindful plodding of the characters' lives, I was hooked. I was craving that countryside in my busy life. How can he make the mundane so wonderful to read, I'll never fathom. Tilghman is a word crafter, all right. Makes it seem so effortless. That be some fine word magic.
Oh, there were little hiccups that took me out of its spell, I'll grant you that. Like how the story flashes forward, dropping any pretext of suspense. Or how the character perspective shifts to men too often for my preferences to characterize Beal. Then there are the odd beats here and there that broke the flow. For many people, it may be a key event that occurs at the midway point that might take them out of it. That was a shock to me, and it took me time to reconcile with it. Intentional too, I bet, since it affects the characters' thoughts and actions from then on like any good watershed moment should. Didn't catch onto that right away though. Sneaky sneaky.
For anyone wondering if they should read Mason's Retreat or The Right-Hand Shore before this needn't be worried. Thomas and Beal stand on their own ground. Their story is linked but so far removed that they've abandoned the Retreat both in a story perspective and a meta sense. Might be spoilers to those novels, but I wouldn't know. I enjoyed this one fine without touching its predecessors.
Thomas and Beal in the Midi is a prize for anyone seeking a story about domestic drama. It's a tasteful historical narrative, too. Thomas and Beal don't live privileged lives and there is attention to the old; it's not a contemporary in disguise and it's not too steeped into the history to deliberately disgust modern readers either. Yes, issues regarding race aren't shied away from either, sometimes making the forefront. Yet all of that didn't end up being the main draw to me. Wholesome love. Despite all that happens within the story, that was the most prominent thought I had about it.
I received the book for free through Goodreads Giveaways.
Well, Tilghman knows how to keep me entranced. There's no war, there's no acts of incredible violence to pull the drama. Just the simple tug and pull of daily life. And that sucks me into the world by the first chapter. From the change in settings to the mindful plodding of the characters' lives, I was hooked. I was craving that countryside in my busy life. How can he make the mundane so wonderful to read, I'll never fathom. Tilghman is a word crafter, all right. Makes it seem so effortless. That be some fine word magic.
Oh, there were little hiccups that took me out of its spell, I'll grant you that. Like how the story flashes forward, dropping any pretext of suspense. Or how the character perspective shifts to men too often for my preferences to characterize Beal. Then there are the odd beats here and there that broke the flow. For many people, it may be a key event that occurs at the midway point that might take them out of it. That was a shock to me, and it took me time to reconcile with it. Intentional too, I bet, since it affects the characters' thoughts and actions from then on like any good watershed moment should. Didn't catch onto that right away though. Sneaky sneaky.
For anyone wondering if they should read Mason's Retreat or The Right-Hand Shore before this needn't be worried. Thomas and Beal stand on their own ground. Their story is linked but so far removed that they've abandoned the Retreat both in a story perspective and a meta sense. Might be spoilers to those novels, but I wouldn't know. I enjoyed this one fine without touching its predecessors.
Thomas and Beal in the Midi is a prize for anyone seeking a story about domestic drama. It's a tasteful historical narrative, too. Thomas and Beal don't live privileged lives and there is attention to the old; it's not a contemporary in disguise and it's not too steeped into the history to deliberately disgust modern readers either. Yes, issues regarding race aren't shied away from either, sometimes making the forefront. Yet all of that didn't end up being the main draw to me. Wholesome love. Despite all that happens within the story, that was the most prominent thought I had about it.
I received the book for free through Goodreads Giveaways.
June 22, 2019
This was a long book... at times I thought of setting it aside... but I kept at it.
A story about a young white man from Maryland right after the Civil War, Thomas. A man who loved and worshipped a free black girl, Beal. They marry and move to France because marriage is illegal in the states.
It is the story of their love and life. Both of them unsure of themselves, trying to find out who they are as individuals and a couple.
Ultimately, they move to the south France... to the Midi, to raise grapes and become wine makers. Unfortunately, each of them breach each other's emotional trust at some point...
What is interesting about this story is how their committment to each other gets them through the tough times of uncertainty... they always cling to love. But for Thomas it is really worship, in fact Beal is a woman that evokes worship from a host of men. They only settle into the real marriage and real love after several tests and once Beal finally loves Thomas equally as he loves her.
A little tedious at times, but I like the reality of it all... love and people aren't perfect and that to really settle into a marriage requires each person to fight their own demons and surrender parts of themselves to build a love that endures. Love like life is an individual and collective journey.
A story about a young white man from Maryland right after the Civil War, Thomas. A man who loved and worshipped a free black girl, Beal. They marry and move to France because marriage is illegal in the states.
It is the story of their love and life. Both of them unsure of themselves, trying to find out who they are as individuals and a couple.
Ultimately, they move to the south France... to the Midi, to raise grapes and become wine makers. Unfortunately, each of them breach each other's emotional trust at some point...
What is interesting about this story is how their committment to each other gets them through the tough times of uncertainty... they always cling to love. But for Thomas it is really worship, in fact Beal is a woman that evokes worship from a host of men. They only settle into the real marriage and real love after several tests and once Beal finally loves Thomas equally as he loves her.
A little tedious at times, but I like the reality of it all... love and people aren't perfect and that to really settle into a marriage requires each person to fight their own demons and surrender parts of themselves to build a love that endures. Love like life is an individual and collective journey.
June 20, 2024
Tilghman’s writing is easy to read, and I am happy to read any novel with a connection to Maryland. But I found the story and the characters here hard to believe. The first third of the book, setting off on a new adventure, was much more interesting than the second two-thirds. I kept asking myself: if these people were so in love that they fled France to be free of the obstacles an interracial couple would have faced in post-Civil-War Maryland, how could they so easily be charmed by strangers? How is it the parents of a woman Thomas led on come to think of him as a long lost son after one afternoon at their winery? What does Beal see in the men who try to seduce her, with varying degrees of success? Both Thomas and Beal felt very flat to me.
June 9, 2024
Intertwining interracial love stories of a white woman and a black man who knew each other from birth so got married but needed to try out other persons along the way while moving to France to farm where interracial married people might not be a problem. As wishy-washi decision makers, they had my ire as they dilly-dallied getting to the grape fam to plant vines and prepare them for wine making. Another reviewer liked the end and not the beginning, I had the opposite comfort level, so I stuck with it until I was about 2/3rds of the way through before quitting.
August 13, 2020
This book was especially pleasing to me since it takes place in both Paris and the Languedoc in the late 1800s. Beal, a black maid, and Thomas, a white landowner, were childhood friends who fell in love, illegally wed, and fled to Paris to live as husband and wife. Thomas buys a winery in the Languedoc, becomes a successful vigneron, and is ever patient as Beal tries to figure out who and with
whom she wants to be.
whom she wants to be.
April 24, 2021
An unusual story which I enjoyed very much. The time spent in Paris and the years in the Midi were both telling about the growth of this young couple, exiled from their American homeland because of their inter-racial marriage. There are certainly some flaws in the story, but some realistic experiences.
May 12, 2022
I read this book because a friend gave it to me read. I believe she liked it because she is a Francophile. I am not. I never came to like the main characters. I actually preferred the supporting cast much better. I am not unhappy that I read it, but it is one I could have lived without. I have found that I read books I like more quickly.
December 9, 2021
Had a terribly difficult time getting into it. All through, not excluding the last chapter. Read a few pages, get distracted, pick up & read a few more. Couldn’t hold my attention despite loving it on paper or in theory.
July 5, 2019
I read 100 pages and thought to stop because the book is wordy and the plot is insignificant or non-existent. I finished the book in spite of myself. It still was not worth the time.
July 6, 2019
This may be an amazing story as it progresses, but it just dragged for me and I have given up and left it unfinished.
July 29, 2019
DNF for me. After 70 pages if you still can't get into it, it's probably not the book for you. Very VERY slow moving, with a lot of detail that instead of helping the story seems to hinder it.
May 17, 2022
Very disappointing. Read for a book club. Unfortunately the person recommending the book hadn’t read it first.
May 8, 2019
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Although a little slow and difficult to start, this novel develops beautifully in the setting of 1890s Paris and then to the wine country of the South of France. Thomas and Beal escape the United States to stay together and live as man and wife in Europe, turning themselves into winemakers.
Although a little slow and difficult to start, this novel develops beautifully in the setting of 1890s Paris and then to the wine country of the South of France. Thomas and Beal escape the United States to stay together and live as man and wife in Europe, turning themselves into winemakers.
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