Customer Reviews

Home Across the Road

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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.

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.

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.

China Redd has been waiting all her life. Waiting on the Redds across the road at Roseberry or for a child to be born or a son to come back or, as now, for death, starting each day with the question: "Is this the day, Lord?"

In 1861, China Redd's family matriarch, Cally, gives birth to the son of two endangered marriages. In less years than a boyhood can be lived, one son dooms the other all because he took his mother's glowing earrings. One mother's heart is mortally wounded & a deep, abiding separation between master & slaves settles in.

100 years later, China waits for death with her own story to add to the generations buried in the slave graveyard up the hill from Roseberry.

Nancy Peacock has brought the kitchen window to life. Has breathed, for a bright moment, Technicolor into sepia-hued photographs. Of men ravaged by slavery & women savaged by loss. Of a son who took a pair of abalone shell earrings & for that another son is sold. One dark night the earrings are stolen, cursed & hidden away.

100 years later, the earrings come back to China as her grand daughter adds her story & Roseberry molders into ruin.

This storyteller, with her profound & lilting language, surprisingly spare & intensely evocative, has given us a read that's like the bursting of summer's first raspberry upon your palette.

A different kind of morality. Set aside your stuff & come Home Across The Road to step into a whole other world where women wait to see what life brings them. A madness I understand. A rage I have known & a passivity that has my daughter snarling at every word spoken. Fascinating!

HOME ACROSS THE ROAD spans 5 generations of Redd's, one side descended from slaves, while the other side descended from the people that owned them. Together, they live on a plantation called Roseberry. The story is told from the view points of several family members from both sides of the family, in particular China, who in the beginning of the book, we are told, is old and waiting to die. Her granddaughter Abolene is living with her across the road from Roseberry, along with Abolene's young baby daughter Cally.

As China tells us her story, the reader slowly learns about the family's early days at Roseberry, and how Jennis Redd, a white man, fathered a child with Cally, a slave owned by Jennis. The child was named Cleavis, and due to a "misunderstanding", Cleavis is sold for stealing a set of abalone pearls that belong to Jennis' wife, and thus Cleavis is taken away forever. In turn, Cally takes revenge on the white Redd's by stealing the pearls, which are then handed down from generation to generation, stories of superstition and luck surrounding the pearls.

As the story progresses, we learn of the different generation members that follow, until we end with Abolene's story. At the same time, we follow the history of the white Redd's that ends with Coyle Redd, the son of an abusive father and a mother who China works for.

HOME ACROSS THE ROAD by Nancy Peacock is told in the same easy-going simple prose that made her debut novel LIFE WITHOUT WATER so charming. Unfortunately, this same style does not work for her second novel. I found this second novel lacking, and although the book had so much potential, spanning 5 generations from the days of slavery to the early 1970's, it seemed to fizzle out before it ended. The story in itself was fascinating, but unfortunately the telling of the story was not. However, because I so enjoyed her debut novel, this book does not discourage me from reading future books written by Nancy Peacock.

Too often one finds individuals who are capable of telling a story but not capable of breathing life into one. Nancy Peacock is truly a life giver with her novel HOME ACROSS THE ROAD. Her opening line, "In 1973, China Redd was waiting to die" gives the reader a first glimpse into the complex world of the Redd family. The reader soon learns that China Redd can't die until she tells this incredible story. A story of the white Redds and the black Redds. A story of white America and black America. A story that not only needed to be told, but demanded it. As is the case with much of African American history, it exists, primarily in the minds and hearts of the walking oracles who lived it first hand. Nancy Peacock gives the fictional oracle, China Redd, an arena to tell a story that is grounded in truth. The story flows smoothly from the past to the present, and it gives the reader a glimpse into the world that many black people lived but did not live to tell about.

Readers loving tales of the deep South and relationships of its peoples will thoroughly revere the lovely writing skills within this short, yet deep novel. Would love to read MORE from this author!

The story of the black Redds and the white Redds gives a good picutre of life for blacks and whites in America, however, the story is rather biased. It is easy to see who you are to feel pity on and who you are not to like.

The blacks are shown as oppressed, loving, caring and family oriented. The white Redds are shown to be over-powering, greedy, and basically not nice people.

Each of the Redds dies a rather violent death or at least a death that is not peaceful. There always seems to be a reason that the world is a better place without them. The black Redds are shown to have very difficult lives, which they may have had, however, there is little joy shown in their lives. There is no reason for them to be happy.

The book was interesting, however, I was looking for more when it ended. The story just fizzled out. The white Redds all were dead and gone, we never do find if any of the black Redds have joy in their lives.

Maybe the story was not long enough, perhaps with a bit more depth the bias would not have been as pronounced.

Home Across the Road is one of the more powerful novels dealing with post-Civil War life for former black slaves to appear in recent times. Roseberry has spent her life on the plantation home of the white Redds: this reflects on that life, relationships between blacks and whites during and after the war, ad one woman's hopes and struggles. A powerful account of an aging black woman's motivations and concerns.

a teacher or two...A warm book, gentle like steel. Excellent storytelling, enough historical fiction to warrant a multiple-read. A good group discussion book, begs to be talked about late into the night.