Customer Reviews

Fire, Ice and Roses:: A Mississippi Story

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The past is recalled and the present celebrated in Gaskin-Smith's (Fire, Ice and Roses: A Mississippi Story). An astounding, well written, first novel, the story details the lives of a group of ordinary people in Northern Mississippi in the 1940's. The depth of the story undeniably takes the reader in search of ones own emotions and reactions to racism, hatred, and bigotry. Gaskin-Smith searches into the soul of the African-American hero, worker, scholar, Paul looking for meaning and understanding of him as a man and a friend. The writer's treatment of Paul's ties to his white ancestry and his bondage by his black skin is remarkable. As Paul struggles to find his own identity as a man, and human being; Rosie, the daughter of a blacksmith, searches to love the soul of Paul and form a bond that crosses racial barriers in an era in American history where such bonds were unspoken of. Fire, Ice, and Roses: A Mississippi story is about so much more than black and white and love and hate. Rather, it is a revelation of the depth of human relationships. Its about what happens when one dares to look into another's soul to find truth, dignity and love. Gaskin-Smith emerges as a delightful narrator as she ushers her readers into the depths of the relationships of these characters as no writer before her has ever done.