Parts of the story were so tense, I had to keep putting the book down. But it’s not just George, everyone is so developed that I could see them standing before me. The characters are richly drawn, and I was drawn into George’s fight to do the right thing. I can see why Oprah picked this for her book club. It’s obvious none of these stories are going to end well and they don’t. He is also engaged in an illicit love affair which is a subplot of the story.
His own son, Caleb, was a confederate soldier, but unlike the others, he disgraced himself on the battlefield. As would be expected, this doesn’t go over well with the plantation owners who have lost their slaves or the recently returned Confederate soldiers. To do so, he hires two recently freed men.
Originally content to sell off his land to make ends meet, after the War, he looks to make his mark on his remaining acres. George is a transplanted northerner in Georgia. The Sweetness of Water is a contemporary classic about the Reconstruction period of the southern states after the Civil War. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.
With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry-freed by the Emancipation Proclamation-seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, a profound debut about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever.
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