Home Across the Road [Hardcover]

Nancy Peacock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2002

Peacock's acclaimed second novel centers on the centuries-old secrets that bind together two families --one white, one black--on an old Southern plantation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Every family has secrets, but the Redds have more than most. Consider, for example, the fact that this North Carolina clan has two distinct branches, the white Redds and the black Redds, their former slaves. Through seven generations, their histories and their blood have mixed, culminating in the present-day occupants of Roseberry Plantation, solitary Coyle Redd and his black housekeeper (and distant cousin), China. When Coyle puts the dilapidated mansion up for auction, it would seem that the two families' shared past will finally come to an end; but in Nancy Peacock's remarkable saga, Home Across the Road, blood ties are not so easily severed. Skillfully jumping from present to past and back again, Peacock traces the Redd connection back to antebellum days when white plantation owner Jennis Redd fathered the child of his slave, Cally. When the boy, Cleavis, is 6 years old, Redd's jealous wife accuses him of stealing a pair of earrings that her own son really took, and has him sold away. In retaliation, Cally takes the earrings herself and buries them under the floor of her slave cabin. From this point on, the fortunes of the black Redds improve while those of the white Redds decline.

Peacock mixes a little magic into the parallel histories she tells, and conjures up an exquisite novel that is part ghost story, part meditation on the ineffable power of blood and history to bind people to a place, to each other, and to patterns of behavior that repeat themselves through the years. Home Across the Road is spare in its prose style but rich in the themes it mines. --Sheila Bright

From Publishers Weekly

The devastating legacy of slavery inexorably shapes the lives of two North Carolina families over a century of changing race relations in Peacock's second novel, after the praised Life Without Water. Tracing the history of Roseberry, a Southern plantation owned by the white Redd family and worked by the black Redds, the novel reaches back to 1855, when plantation master Jennis Redd raped and impregnated slave Cally. This event engenders the primary story of resistance passed down the generations of black Redds: Cally's six-year-old son by Jennis is sold away by the jealous plantation mistress, Lula Anne, who falsely accuses the boy of stealing a pair of her abalone earrings. Mourning her child, Cally herself steals the earrings, and after that, the white Redd children die while the black Redd children grow up strong and healthy. The earrings, kept hidden for decades, become a magical symbol of hope and fear, even after the black Redds gain their freedom and buy property just across the road from Roseberry. But China Redd, born free in 1912, has been a servant at Roseberry almost her entire life, and in 1971, she's outlived the white family and wants to tell her bitter story. Although a heartfelt and thoroughly imagined effort, the book inscribes the black Redds' legacy of memories and survivors' stories in an incantatory, sing-song narration that quickly grows tiresome. The circular plot repeats the extended metaphor of the earrings incessantly. Other recurring motifs include the searing image of attic stairs worn down where slaves climbed them for decades, and Cally's husband Tom's legendary "bone-chilling sigh" of sorrow that sweeps through Roseberry every summer. Of the dozens of often sketchy characters, the main speaker China and her granddaughter Abolene do eventually redeem the painful complexities of their family's history by using their stories to sustain a fragile yet enduring hope for the future. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing; First Edition, edition (January 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563525097
• ISBN-13: 978-1563525094
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,331,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spellbinding Human Drama, January 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Home Across the Road (Hardcover)

I liked Nancy Peacock's Life without Water a lot, but nothing prepared me for the Redd's story in Home Across the Road. This story, which spans five generations tells the story of the Redd family, descended from slaves and slave-owners. Peacock's writing is wonderful and hypnotic, drawing you slowly into a complex family history full of love and hate, prejudice, revenge, and desire. This wonderful and moving story is unlike any I've read in a long while. It reminded me both of Pauli Murray's Proud Shoes and Alice Walker's early books.

The Home Across the Road refers to the Roseberry Plantation. But the title could also refer to any home across the road, which is full of people and stories like the ones in this book, if only we'd listen; if only we'd look. Nancy Peacock actually listens and sees the world as it is and as it was and transforms it into a meaningful story. A remarkable accomplishment!

I'm recommending Home Across the Road to my book group and wish there was a readers' guide to go along with it. It's a fascinating tale that will spark some good discussions.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Peacock has done it again, May 15, 2000

By 

Nancy R. Katz "NancyK18" (NJ) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home Across the Road (Hardcover)

Several years ago I came across and read Nancy Peacock's first book, Life Without Water, and found myself eagerly waiting for her next read. And now that I have read Home Across the Road, I am once again waiting to read another offering by this talented writer.

A pair of earrings, long buried, and a once stately plantation home are the backdrop against which an intriguing generational tale is told in Home Across the Road.

The white Redds were once an old aristocratic Southern family complete with a working plantation home and slaves. The black Redds were once the white Redd slaves who grew up while working the plantation, married had families and eventually inhabit their own home across the road.

As China, an aging woman sits on her porch, she reminisces about her family and their involvement with the white Redds. Through her recollections, she tells the history of both familis and events which have led them to live across the road and watch first the demise of the plantation family, and now the total abandonment of their home. She recalls how a pair of earrings owned by a white Redd wife were stolen long ago and came into the possession of a black Redd slave forvermore sealing the fate of both families.

Mrs. Pecock has written a small book which envelops the reader and has them asking for more.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving-Suspensful Story, June 28, 2000

By 

Beryl Kalisa (Atlanta, Ga USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home Across the Road (Hardcover)

HOME ACROSS THE ROAD is a moving-suspensful novel.Last fall while reading the book review section of the Atlanta Constituion newspaper- i found the review. I immediatedly when tothe bookstore to purchase it.Its better than the review.Its such a great story and one thatis different than many that depict this epoch in American history.The author has given the African American Redd family all the dignity they deserve.Its intriguing and I was on the edge waiting to see how this story ended.Was sorry it had to end.I have read the book twice and its one of the few novels that you can read and reread and reread.Was inspired to read the author's earlier book LIFE WITHOUT WATERwhich was also gret but HOME ACROSS THE ROAD IS BY FAR THE BEST.ITS A THUMPS UP WITH AN A! Cant wait to read the next novel by Nancy Peacock.