New Harmony by Leon E. Pettiway - #bookreview

The day belonged to the dead, and our lamenting floated down the worn steps of Calvary Baptist Church, past grave markers and upturned stones, drifted down Chestnut Street and onto Main, around the bend, and down into the next hollow. From where I sat on the front pew, I heard Pastor Jones scream...

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It has recently come to my attention that I must make it clear at the beginning of my reviews that I received this book for free from Author Marketing Experts. I have not been paid for doing this and all opinions are my own. I am Bookshop.org affiliated, which means I earn a very small amount of money if you buy from there using my direct link. Although I include purchase links to Amazon, I am not affiliated with them. I include them to make it easy for you to navigate to them if you so wish.

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The Blurb

This moving work of African American women's fiction honors resilience, belonging, and the complicated inheritance of love.

Nestled in the quiet beauty of New Harmony, South Carolina, a family saga unfolds against the backdrop of the deep-seated memories of Jim Crow in the 1950s. Margaret grows up in a family where she learns what it means to be both "colored" and female—first as a daughter discovering the harsh injustices around her, and later as a mother fighting to protect her own. When violence tears her world apart, the murder of her son tests the limits of her love, faith, and resilience.

As Margaret reckons with loss, this story of small-town grief turns toward community, memory, and the fragments of hope found in storytelling. This stunning work of literary fiction explores themes of cultural heritage and long-held family secrets that shape her understanding of the past— and guide her toward healing in the present. The result is a thought-provoking, poignant, emotional portrait of one woman refusing to be erased.

In a blend of Southern and historical fiction based on real-life themes, New Harmony illuminates the lived experiences of black women in the Jim Crow South.

New Harmony: A Mother's Story of Love and Loss is Pettiway's debut novel and the first in a series of thematically linked works exploring community, identity, and the enduring bonds of family.

Come home to New Harmony— where healing begins.

My Review

There is so much to unpack in this amazing story that I hardly know where to start.

The book begins with the main character, Margaret, grieving for her murdered teenage son during the 1940s in America's South Carolina. The narrative then moves back in time to the late 19th century and we follow Margaret from childhood. We walk beside her as she encounters injustice, bigotry and racism. However, we also rejoice with her as she falls in love, gives birth to her children and ultimately finds inner peace. That's not a spoiler as it is obvious that is where the book is heading from the very beginning. 

We see her grow from child to woman; we watch her experience both joy and heartbreak, and it was impossible not to feel empathy for this character. She carries the burden of her forebears who were enslaved on the very plantation where she still lives. She is shored up by her faith and it was this, alongside the love and support of her family and friends, which enabled her to emotionally survive. 

The author has put together a powerful story with such multi-faceted characters that I felt that I knew these people personally. I was slightly bereft when I turned the final page and had to leave them behind. 

The novel contains a good mix of prose and dialogue, both of which move the story on at an appropriate pace. The setting is atmospheric — the superiority in the Big House is palpable, especially when contrasted with Margaret's loving home.

The book provoked quite a reaction in me, just as an excellent and well-written book should do. I was angered on behalf of Margaret and her friends and family when they experienced such bigotry and racism. 

This was a five-star read for me. Whilst I found the ending a little long-winded, I nonetheless felt it deserved a top-score rating for the powerful emotion that it caused in me as a reader. It was an excellent book to read and I wholeheartedly recommend it. 

Please be aware that the book contains outdated derogatory language which was common to the time period.

Book Details

ISBN:  979 8989182053

Publisher:  Melshin Press

Formats:  e-book, hardback and paperback

No. of Pages:  374 (paperback)

Purchase Links

Author Website

Amazon UK

Amazon US

About the Author

Leon E. Pettiway, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), the Venerable Lobzang Dorje, is Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has conducted research that integrates geographical and criminological theories to explain crime patterns in urban areas. In that regard, he has published articles on the impact of race and ghettoization on patterns of crime participation, the role of environmental and individual factors in arson, the relationship between an individual's drug use and criminal participation in the formation of crime partnerships, and the criminal decision-making process of addicts and nonusers in light of various environmental cues. Upon the conclusion of a major field research project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, he completed Honey, Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay, and on the Streets, a Finalist for the 9th Annual Lambda Literary Award (Temple University Press), which examined the lives of drug addicted, gay transgender women who commit a variety of crimes, and Workin' It: Women Living Through Drugs and Crime (Temple University Press) which chronicled the drug use and crime participation of a group of inner-city women. Before his retirement, his intellectual work centered on the construction of knowledge and how Eastern and Western philosophical traditions might be integrated into criminological theory and the administration of justice. His upcoming publication, Only for the Brave at Heart: Essays Rethinking Race, Crime, and Justice, critiques the ways the American mind has thought about race, crime, and justice. In using the Buddhist and Afrocentric perspectives as a vehicle for social commentary, he provides a path to liberate our thoughts concerning these important issues.

He is a fully ordained Buddhist monk, one of only a handful of African-American monks in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. In retirement, he focuses his attention on his spiritual practice, teaching Buddhism, and writing.

You can also find Leon at:

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(ARC and media courtesy of Author Marketing Experts)

(author photo courtesy of the author's website)

(author bio courtesy of African American Literature Book Club)

(all opinions are my own)

Yellow Bird's Song by Heather Miller - #excerpt #blogtour

 

Today I am thrilled to be bringing you an excerpt from Yellow Bird's Song by author, Heather Miller. But first, a little about the book...

The Blurb

Rollin Ridge, a mercurial figure in this tribal tale, makes a fateful decision in 1850, leaving his family behind to escape the gallows after avenging his father and grandfather’s brutal assassinations. With sin and grief packed in his saddlebags, he and his brothers head west in pursuit of California gold, embarking on a journey marked by hardship and revelation. Through letters sent home, Rollin uncovers the unrelenting legacy of his father’s sins, an emotional odyssey that delves deep into his Cherokee history.

The narrative’s frame transports readers to the years 1827-1835, where Rollin’s parents, Cherokee John Ridge and his white wife, Sarah, stumble upon a web of illicit slave running, horse theft, and whiskey dealings across Cherokee territory. Driven by a desire to end these inhumane crimes and defy the powerful pressures of Georgia and President Andrew Jackson, John Ridge takes a bold step by running for the position of Principal Chief, challenging the incumbent, Chief John Ross. The Ridges face a heart-wrenching decision: to stand against discrimination, resist the forces of land greed, and remain on their people’s ancestral land, or to sign a treaty that would uproot an entire nation, along with their family.

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ISBN:  978 1962465229

Publisher:  Historium Press

Formats:  e-book, hardback and paperback

No. of Pages:  370 (paperback)

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The Excerpt

John Rollin Ridge, West Dessert, Utah, 1851

Instead of other travelers along this desert route, we’d found wagon carcasses, adding ours to the lot. Whether human corpses decayed inside, I couldn’t say. I didn’t stop to find out, ridding myself of guilt for not burying the dead. My body couldn’t have done it properly with so little water, not without following directly behind them. 

As the afternoon waned, we dismounted and walked beside our thirsty animals. In the desert, a man’s horse becomes too weak to carry him. So, he travels on foot, closer to the dust, breathing and clogging his mind with villainous grains. Packs double their weight with worry, heavier with one last blanket of self-preservation. Yet, parched though he may be, his mind sings songs, like uprooted choruses from a withered elder, telling his trials to impatient warriors who already know the legend’s end.

Expanses of grass shrunk into patches, peeking through worn spots in the desert, like leg hair peeking through worn and holey farmhand pants. We found the pooled water brackish, the color of tea from iodine, salt mixing with sparse rainwater. It wasn’t potable for man or beast. With each disappointment from the lack of soluble water, our progress trickled, nearly stopping entirely. 

The sway of horses and pack mules found their rhythm, sluggish though it was. Heat rippled across the sand to just repel back to us from wide mountain berths. Thorny bushes turned pale, a shade lighter than the sand at our feet, desperate for water deep in their roots. Snakes could not reach it and fled, finding no shade. 

We pressed forward into the sun, past the mountains near Salt Lake. Each pull at the rim of our hats remained where it was stretched. Bandanas covered our mouths, eyes asquint, leaving each of us absent identity. 

Aeneas coughed, attempting to break his silence, rallying saliva enough to articulate some question or another. One which I’d likely have no answer to. He said, “How are we gonna feed the horses, Rollin?” 

I was right. 

Wacooli answered behind me. “Anee, we’ll have to search for grass on foot and bring it to ‘em.”  

From my brother’s response to Wacooli’s lack of enthusiasm, I knew Aeneas stewed in his thoughts. His concern for our animals was more about him than the beasts. 

Aeneas said, “You know what I’m hungry for? Grandma’s fried bread, Mama’s glazed chicken, Honey’s pole beans boiled with fatback, and strawberry pie.”

“Damn it, Aeneas! Doesn’t do us any good thinking about it.” I took the fatal risk of putting my thoughts to voice while lingering in Aeneas’ conjured savory tastes. I bit my tongue and swallowed twice. “Aeneas, do you remember Papa asking Mama to take all the seeds out of his strawberries?”

“Nope. Too little. You can hold Papa in your thoughts better than me, Rollin. You’ve got more stock.” 

When I didn’t answer right away, he asked, “What did Papa say?”

“Said they got stuck in his teeth, and she needed to remove them.”

“Did she throw something at him?” Aeneas smiled briefly and tried a laugh, but his throat was too dry to form the sound. 

“No. She kissed him, as I remember it.” 

The memory was as sweet as the fruit. Our lives were so predictable then, freedom through synchronicity. Running Waters will always be home, not the cabin in the West at Honey Creek, or Mama’s dogtrot in Fayetteville, but our home, Running Waters, in Cherokee Nation East, settled among valley lands in the foothills of the Appalachians. 

My parent’s extensive farm stretched into the valley on a high hill, crowned with a fine grove of oak and hickory, with a large clear spring at its foot. The orchard was on the left, wheat and cornfields to the right, pastures of cows, goats on one side near the house, and sheep grazing on the other.3 Behind the house, the running spring gave our home its name. After Grandfather’s New Echota Treaty in 1835, we, too, would run over rock, slip on moss, and fall downhill with only brief plains to pool. 

The ground whitened under our horse hooves, salted sand gathering in random odd-shaped lines. Only God could articulate their rhyme and reason. Boot tracks marked our path northwest. Each saunter brought another thought: some forward, most backward. Where we’d been, what we’d lost. My thoughts rambled without any respite.

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About the Author:

As a veteran English teacher and college professor, Heather has spent nearly thirty years teaching her students the author’s craft. Now, with empty nest time on her hands, she’s writing herself, transcribing lost voices in American’s history.

(all media courtesy of The Coffee Pot Book Club)

(all opinions are my own)