Customer Reviews

Freshwater Road

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This book by Denise Nicholas is a fictional account of a young college student's experience as a volunteer during Mississippi freedom summer in 1964. The book came highly recommended and I read it eagerly. I was most interested, and impressed in the very realistic way the author dealt with the subject of nonviolence during the civil rights movement.

Throughout the book, Ms. Nicholas does a strong job of giving readers a sense of the oppressive climate of fear that permeates everything the heroine does while in Mississippi. From the reflections on the lynching that happenened a few years before in Pineyville, the town where she works, to the brutal beating she witnesses state troopers deal out to a fellow civil rights worker, she knows white on black violence is real and everywhere in Mississippi in 1964. Then when Goodman Schwerner and Chaney turn up dead, the threat becomes even more intense.

The book's heroine, Celeste Tyree, certainly does face real danger and real fear during her summer in Pineyville, enough to question the value of nonviolence. But to me the story was a reminder of the great power the nonviolence of the civil rights movement had to move public sympathy and change the way the whole country looked at the oppression of blacks in the South. There was certainly violence and tragedy involved in the movement, and many people suffered in their struggle to gain their basic rights as citizens, but the nonviolent character of the movement prevented the situation from becoming much more confrontational and violent.

Celeste also struggles with powerful family issues during her summer in Mississippi.

In summary I highly recommend this powerful story of life inside the civil rights movement from someone who was there. It's amazing to believe that so many of the volunteers who made such a profound difference in American life were like Celeste Tyree, young people not even out of their teens.

Denise Nicholas sets her impressive debut novel in Mississippi during the summer of 1964, the Freedom Summer when civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner disappeared and were later found murdered. Although segregation and second-class citizenship for blacks had officially ended in the United States, little had changed in the Deep South. Celeste Tyree, a nineteen year old University of Michigan student, decides to volunteer for the One Man, One Vote movement despite the dangers. The office stations her in Pineyville, Mississippi, a town a few miles from the Louisiana border. There, she lives with Mrs. Owens, an older woman who helps Celeste learn the ways of Pineyville. With the help of the local black minister Reverend Singleton, Celeste begins the Freedom School to teach black history to the children and a voter registration class for the adults. Celeste finds herself immediately in danger, as whites and even some blacks are angered by her attempts to gain equal rights for the black citizens. Celeste takes to sleeping on the floor to avoid bullets fired through windows and to stepping off the sidewalk to let whites pass. Through all the danger and demeaning acts, Celeste perseveres. In the meantime, in Detroit, Celeste's father Shuck worries about his beloved daughter, for he knows the risks she faces. In the end, he can do nothing to protect his headstrong daughter. After all, she takes after her daddy, a "race man," who takes pride in who he is and is willing to fight for it.

Nicholas, who starred in both "Room 222" and "In the Heat of the Night," proves that her talents run deeper than acting, as her solid, sometimes beautiful, writing evokes her subject matter with the same elegance and intelligence she brings to her roles. Most of her characters are complex and believable, and her plot unfolds with a natural storyteller's logic. Although the author occasionally founders by neglecting certain subplots and characters who seem destined to play major roles, the overall result far exceeds most first-time novels.

Nicholas seamlessly weaves the history of the civil rights movement into the more intimate story of one young, idealistic woman alone in a strange, hostile place. This cross between commercial fiction and history lesson makes this novel an accessible and compelling entry into the black experience during the 1960's.

The story of a young black girl, Celeste Tyree, who leaves the comfort of her Detroit home to spend the summer of 1964, "Freedom Summer" in Mississippi, helping voter registration and teaching in the Freedom School, has been told by writer Denise Nicholas, with great drama and understanding of how to reel the reader in and keep him/her glued to the page. Freedom Summer is a part of all our history, black and white, and should not be forgotten by any of us. Nicholas uses the background of the fear and terror that faced the volunteers and the residents of the small town of Pineyville where she has been housed, along with describing Celeste's own changes in understanding who she is and her maturing during those turbulent weeks. The language is lyrical in the description of the beauty of the landscape, harrowing in its drama and totally rewarding in the storytelling. A must for all ages.

Hallelujah! A great new writer has emerged like Venus from the forehead of Zeus. With Freshwater Road, Denise Nicholas takes the reader into the aorta of the heart of darkness called Mississippi, in the the time of apartheid America of 1964. Sometimes Faulknerian, sometimes Tolstoyian, sometimes Morrisonian, but always Nicholasonian, the author causes us to sweat when her heroine perspires; to grit our teeth and hold back curses at the easy hatred of some Southern whites; and to hum the beloved Freedom song, "Ain't nobody going to turn me around"as we turn the page to experience what folly or sorrow may be down the corridor in a dusty Southern courthouse. Ms. Nicholas knows more than fifty ways to describe the constant, tyrannical heat of a deep Southern summer. The reader becomes nineteen again, feeling the conflicted thoughts of a mercurial teenager on the cusp of becoming a determined young woman. In this recounting of one girl's coming to grips with what it means to be black in America, in a place which seldom had black people's interest at heart, and at a time when repressing black people and sometimes easily murdering them rarely made the eleven o'clock editions of either the local or national news, the author reminds us of the exquisite grace and incredible resilience of the young people who came to Mississippi to fight the good fight. With humor and incisiveness Nicholas paints a picture of the dignity and courage of the local residents who joined with the "outsiders" to march, to got to jail and to die, to bring to black, disenfranchised Americans the Constitutional right to vote. Intertwined with the heroine's story of finding her place in the Civil Rights struggle, is the chronicle of a girl facing grown-up dilemmas for the first time, none the least of which involve her own identity, class and color issues,and how to make the best life for herself. Freshwater road is an evocative and powerful story of a sea change in American history. Its unforgettable images will provoke, enchant and linger long after the last word on the last page is read.

... and this book really is Celeste's story. As a young woman struggling with self-image and the very essence of her sense of self, Celeste sets off from cushy Ann Arbor to register Negros to vote in rural Mississippi during "Freedom Summer" in 1964. Life is shockingly tough in these parts, and you'll wince with pain as gunfire rings out, and innocent people are beaten or killed. But you'll also smile with pleasure as Celeste's fighter spirit endures the never-ending heat, and battles not only for equal treatment of her fellow man, but for her self esteem, too.

Ms. Nicholas' descriptive sentences remind me a little bit of Pat Conroy's ability to bring the reader into the character's setting. Her vocabulary and the dialogue is captivating; this novel is a reader's read, not just fluff. While Freshwater Road is a coming of age story, it also provides an historical look into troublesome part of America's past. I'd definitely recommend this novel - and I'm already looking forward to Ms. Nicholas' next one!

Freshwater Road is a compelling coming of age story set during a defining moment in America's civil rights struggle. In the summer of 1964, nineteen year old Celeste Tyree travels from Michigan to Mississippi to participate in the Summer Project. Northern activists like Celeste have come to register Negro voters and draw national attention to the state's brutal oppression of its black-skinned citizens.

Most of the Summer Project volunteers are upper-middle-class whites attending elite universities. Celeste is a middle-class black student at the University of Michigan whose father owns a nightclub in Detroit. Part of Celeste's agenda in Mississippi is to validate her own racial identity - something her father embraces and her light-skinned mother seems to have abandoned.

Assigned to run a freedom school for children and a voter registration project for adults in the small town of Pineyville, Celeste must first adjust to dilapidated plumbing, debilitating humidity, and the torpid pace of the rural south. Then she has to deal with the hostile white response to her project. The beatings, church burnings and arbitrary lawlessness of Pineyville's sheriff are true to the historical acts of white racial violence that occurred in Mississippi that summer.

Once Celeste settles in, the novel follows three main story strands. Celeste and a local minister attempt to breach the resistance of the white Registrar and register at least a few black voters before Celeste heads back North. She starts up a romance with Ed, a swashbuckling Summer Project staffer. Will they feel the same way about each other once they're out of the Mississippi pressure cooker? Finally, a letter from her mother shakes Celeste's sense of self to the foundations, and she has to figure out how to respond.

Nicholas writes a competent prose, but she gives us too much fine-grained detail about Celeste's physical reactions, which slows the narrative flow. This is particularly problematic given how much action the author is trying to move forward. For example, there's a subplot about Celeste's friendship with a young local girl that promises to reveal something interesting about poor blacks killing the dreams of their aspiring children. But it peters out, lost among Celeste's whining about dirt, bugs and the dearth of indoor toilets. Toward the end of the summer, and the end of the book, the momentum does pick up again.

On the plus side, it's interesting and instructive to see the Summer Project story through the eyes of a black volunteer. (Most of the volunteer accounts were written by whites.) Though she's a stranger to the south, Celeste has less far to travel to meet her black hosts where they live. As a result, Nicholas's story has a depth and intimacy that's missing from many other accounts, which treat the locals like residents of a partially decoded foreign country.

The Summer Project volunteers operated in conditions that resembled a war zone. Like any solder in combat, Celeste is whipsawed by fatigue, fear and exhilaration. Her belief in the power of non-violent direct action wavers under the pressure of numerous provocations. But she comes through her time of testing with hard-won insights about race, identity and human connection. Through Celeste, Nicholas ably shows us how much courage it took to be in that place at that time, and what was gained by those who took the risk.

With FRESHWATER ROAD, Denise Nicholas has wrought a significant literary work that is awesome in its emotional complexity and authentic in its historical reconstruction. Her sensitive and compelling prose suffuses each page as she vividly weaves the nightmare of American racism into the life altering summer sojourn of her young protagonist, Celeste Tyree. This powerful and unforgettable story will resonate for generations to come.

I could not put this book down! Denise Nicholas has written a riveting and important piece of fiction here. She manages to capture a time in American history rarely dealt with in such stark, emotionally moving and dramatic fashion, while simultaneously weaving a very personal family drama.

Much like a master painter uses colors, shapes and brush strokes to move the viewer right into the landscape, Ms. Nicholas uses brilliant and highly effective metaphors and images to evoke in the reader the same heart-pounding suspense and hope the main character experiences.

Freshwater Road will grab your imagination and take you on the "ride"...the freedom ride" ... of your life.

Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas is a poignant and riveting debut novel. Nicholas is a gifted storyteller and this debut novel includes all the ingredients of an exceptional read: unforgettable characters, vivid imagery, fluid pacing, rich dialogue/prose, moving plot, a timeless/classic theme, and strong writing. Nicholas delivers a powerful and emotionally engaging story about a young lady-Celeste Tyree-who comes of age during the summer of 1964-Freedom Summer. For Celeste Tyree, a middle-class, attractive, green-eyed, red-boned, Detroit native, 1964 would be one of the hottest and explosive summers that she would experience literally and figuratively.

Celeste would join other college-aged students from as far away as Stanford University, as close as Tougaloo College (Jackson, MS), who would journey to the backwoods of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama to make a difference in someone's lives as they idealistically hoped to open doors for Southern Negroes (we were Negroes then). These were people still living in a racially oppressed society which "made children think less, speak little, and dream almost never, bending many of them into the hunched old people they would eventually become." The Freedom Summer volunteers hoped to make a great difference in someone's lives and envisioned "roads would get paved, schools would be improved, and children would be able to go into the library to read the books or take them home." It would be the summer to end segregation in the South.

Celeste's destination would be Pineyville, MS where she would spend the summer teaching Negro kids history during the day and the evenings preparing adult Negroes to register to vote. Celeste would recall the summer of 1964 as one of terror and triumph. It would be a summer of getting folks to vote, watching friends beaten within an inch of their lives by those who were to protect and serve, spending hours in a jail cell, hearing about churches being bombed, and deaths of innocent children. She would wish for home/Detroit many times in her dreams, her walks to the outhouse, her daily struggle with the lack of running water, her soaked clothing because of the oppressive heat, her bitten and sore skin because of hungry mosquitoes,and most overwhelming and challenging at times--her loneliness. It would also be a summer of self-discovery and identity. Surely, a summer she would never forget and one that would go down in history as remarkable-and she would be part of that history.

Freshwater Road is an uplifting, compelling and captivating read. Although the story floundered in several spots, and Nicholas didn't necessary flesh out each character, these issues aside, Freshwater Road is a very powerful story. Nicholas takes us back to a time that many would like to forget and others need to remember so that history does not repeat itself. Freshwater Road should be required reading for every high school/college student curriculum and every African American family should own one copy. It is a story that should not be forgotten and should be told at every family reunion-so that our people do not perish due to lack of knowledge and we do not forget from whence we came.

APOOO Rating: 4.5 stars

Reviewed by Yasmin

APOOO BookClub

The debut novel of award-winning actress Denise Nicholas, Freshwater Road is a story set during the summer of 1964, about a volunteer for the civil rights movement who may be in over her head. Nineteen-year-old college sophomore Celeste Tyree travels to a small Mississippi town to organize a voter registration project, and prepare townspeople to pass the state's convoluted voting test to defy the Jim Crow laws meant to exclude black citizens from the polls. But as violence strikes members of the movement and a young girl close to her goes missing, she must recognize the ruthlessness of those who oppose change. There are no easy answers in this gripping novel about tensions drawn between lines of race, color, creed, and the power of family bonds.