I just finished reading a really great book. It is called Cane River by Lalita Tademy. Thought I would put it out there if anyone was looking for a good read. I also just finished another book called "I Married a Soldier" by Lydia Spencer Lane. Below are the descriptions of the books from Amazon.
Cane River
Five generations and a hundred years in the life of a matriarchal black Louisiana family are encapsulated in this ambitious debut novel that is based in part upon the lives, as preserved in both historical record and oral tradition, of the author's ancestors. In 1834, nine-year-old Suzette, the "cocoa-colored" house servant of a Creole planter family, has aspirations to read, to live always in a "big house" and maybe even to marry into the relatively privileged world of the gens de couleur libre. Her plans are dashed, however, when at age 13 a French ‚migr‚ takes her as his mistress. Her "high yellow" daughter Philomene, in turn, is maneuvered into becoming the mother of Creole planter Narcisse Fredieu's "side family." After the Civil War, Philomene pins her hopes for a better future on her light-skinned daughter, Emily Fredieu, who is given a year of convent schooling in New Orleans. But Emily must struggle constantly to protect her children by her father's French cousin from terrorist "Night Riders" and racist laws. Tademy is candid about her ancestors' temptations to "pass," as their complexions lighten from the color of "coffee, to cocoa, to cream to milk, to lily." While she fully imagines their lives, she
doesn't pander to the reader by introducing melodrama or sex. Her frank observations about black racism add depth to the tale, and she demonstrates that although the practice of slavery fell most harshly upon blacks, and especially women, it also constricted the lives and choices of white men. Photos of and documents relating to Tademy's ancestors add authenticity to a fascinating story
Lydia Spencer Lane’s account of her life as a young army bride on the early southwestern frontier is both invaluable history and delightful commentary. As an officer’s wife, Lane left her home in Pennsylvania in 1854 to accompany her new husband to his first post in the West—the encampment at Fort Inge, Texas, then in the midst of a yellow-fever epidemic. For the next sixteen years, Lane crossed the Great Plains by wagon seven times, traveled nearly 8,000 miles, raised three children, and became accustomed to tours of duty that required the family to move at least every six months to a different set of military forts, frontier garrisons, and trailside bivouacs across New Mexico and Texas.
First published in 1893 and unavailable for nearly a decade, Lane’s narrative manifests a dry wit that lends humor to events that range from the uncomfortable to the terrifying. Through her eyes we see the close-knit social life of an army post, the western frontier’s divided response to the American Civil War (including the Confederate invasion of the Mesilla Valley), and the cultures and peoples of the West
