Tender, brutal, heartbreaking, hopeful, Ward's intimate portrayal of an African-American family, living and dead, in present day Mississippi, is rightfully highly acclaimed. It should be a part of the national conscious and conscience. The governor of Florida would probably ban it from classrooms.
To read this is to be moved, to understand, to some small extent, the dilemma of a person of color in a White dominated world, and to be amazed at the restraint shown by most of the Black community in the face of so much continued injustice.
Man's inhumanity to man is also on full display in Rutherfurd's Micherner-eque take on London, from the earliest inhabitants over 2,000 years ago, through the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes and the Normans and beyond. It's over 800 pages of fascinating history, and it's also a novel, following several families through the centuries, chronicling their fortunes as they rise and fall. I found it engrossing reading.
Historical fiction was some of my favorite reading as early as junior high, kinda painless learning. I highly recommend both of these.
Oops--I inadvertently hit PUBLISH before setting the date for the second. And can't undo it. So this is Thursday's post a little early.