Child of the South-Joanna Catherine Scott

Child of the South
Joanna Catherine Scott
Berkley, May 2009, $14.00
ISBN: 9780425226025

With the Civil War over, half-breed Eugenia May Spotswood returns home searching for family especially the one her mother to belong to, but mostly finding hate between her two worlds of black and white. One noted exception is a black North Carolina senator who befriends Eugenia May giving her powerful backing.

A former slave Tom served as a spy for the Union while Clyde Bricket fought for the Confederacy. They come home to North Carolina where they meet in poverty as neither has much of anything except Tom is free and Clyde is crippled. If they can get past their prejudice and forge a team, they can rebuild their homes; separately neither can stand up to those who want the new South to remain devastated.

The sequel to THE ROAD FROM CHAPEL HILL (not read by me) is a profound look at the South struggling to recover from the ravages of the Civil War, mostly fought below the Mason-Dixon Line. The characters are fully developed so that the good, the bad, and the ugly compete for how the New South will be shaped. With more subplots than above that merge into a deep look at the aftermath of the Civil War, Joanna Catherine Scott provides a powerful historical.

Harriet Klausner