Customer Reviews

The Road From Chapel Hill

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My favorite way to learn about history is from good fiction. THE ROAD FROM CHAPEL HILL, sure does fill the bill. Ms. Scott whisked me away to that tense period of the Civil War, when so many lives were wrecked and so many hearts broken. The main characters, socialite Eugenia, now destitute, Tom the runaway slave seeking true freedom, and the wounded Clyde, the farm boy must make life changing and heroic decisions, and while they fit so well into their time period, the reader can see the problems they face are universal and always relevant. For a peek into history while meeting unforgettable characters, I recommend this fascinating book. I, for one, couldn't put it down.

While reading The Road From Chapel Hill, I couldn't help but wonder was the author alive during the American Civil War? Maybe this novel is a reprint of an earlier work? Or, did some publisher find old diaries and piece them together for a novel? It's hard for me to believe this, but my reserch tells me the author is alive, well, and living in North Carolina.
Turning pages in this book is like watching a movie in your mind. Sometimes in dusty smelly black and white, other times in HD Technicolor. The detail to surroundings,the spirit of the main characters, the accuracy of life as it was during the building of America are stunning achievements.

The Road from Chapel Hill dazzles with its range of ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances in the border state of North Carolina during the Civil War. The author's subtle yet constant attention to accurate, historical, details help bring the reader deeply into the story while feeling as though revisiting a familiar time period. The horrors of war, the endurance of love, the repercussions of slavery and the human ability to understand and change--all push the story forward at an exciting pace. A damn good read!

The three main characters in Scott's The Road from Chapel Hill are so without roundness and definition that they inspire little feeling in the reader - steroetypes all. Each of the three is a Southerner, yet each finds himself in allegiance with the northern, abolotionist cause. I found it odd that the former Southern Belle, the black slave named Tom, and the coming-of-age male cracker would all represent the northern point of view. Though set in Chapel Hill, NC, there is no character of any importance who represents the ideas and ideals of the South- it's not as if they went to war without a strong and impassioned sense of preservation for a treasured way of life. But you won't find that ambivalence in these pages, and without that complexity of character and situation, the book, though nicely written, leaves no impression.

I love historical fiction and so I'm disappointed I couldn't give this five stars. At times the details are wonderful and some of the prose quite lovely, but unfortunately not enough of it is. There's plenty of research material available on the Civil War, so I'm not as impressed as some by the author's ability to make us feel like we are there. I didn't buy into the plot twists and it felt like the end of the novel just dropped off, as though the author simply got tired of writing and said, this is a good place to stop. I may read another of her books but it won't be downloaded on my Kindle. I can see this being made into a TV miniseries but for me it doesn't work as literature.

There is something about Ms. Scott's writing that makes you feel like you are right there. It transports you into this other world she's created for you and before you know it -- your own worldly responsibilities are out the window and you're a slave to her tale.

I felt Tom. I felt Eugenia. I felt I was right there in the tale. And then I felt really bad that I couldn't write as well as Ms. Scott. I can't wait to read her other books.

I was delighted with this book and found it completely absorbing.
A page turner with an impressive grasp of historical detail,
The Road From Chapel Hill takes on the ambitious themes: love, war, slavery,
and brings them alive with human longing, shame and frustration.

The characters are haunting. Tom the slave shot in the legs
trying to escape, never gives up his quest to be a free man.
His white mistress, Eugenia Spotswood, loses her place
in the world yet continues a search for a life of usefulness.
Clyde, the son of a cruel tobacco farmer dreams of escaping
his harsh life. The dignified abolitionist Aunt Baker
and her helper Henry, who risked their lives daily
to save other lives, stayed in my mind long after
I finished the story.

Scott paints vivid portraits of slavemaster and slave,
general and thief, mine boss and turpentiner. The rich
details of everyday life during this Civil War drama
set in the border state of North Carolina, come alive.
Descriptions of the southern army are stunning.
The pathos of war and the tragedy of lives torn apart
by war prove deeply compelling. This is
an excellent, highly-readable book.

This book starts slowly and was quite boring in the beginning. I decided to give it a chance and plodded through it. It eventually picked up speed and I was quite relieved to find that the author had at last settled on a storyline and was finally running with it only to have it come to an abrupt and very unsatisfying ending. Calling this story a cliffhanger would be giving this book too much credit. I love historical fiction and since the author admits to making up a story about a real character, at the very least she should have made up an ending to go along with the story.

This book should serve as encouragement to anyone who wants to have a novel published, because this one *was* published, and it is a turkey. I found it at the Sacramento airport bookstore and picked it up because of the title (I'm from Raleigh), and the fact that I was otherwise out of reading material.

SPOILER WARNING - I will be talking about how the book ends.

The author plainly attended the Clyde Edgerton school of the End of the Novel, which means it just stops. All of the ink spilled about Eugenia reuniting with Tom, and all of the ink spilled about Tom reuniting with Mary, is left utterly unresolved. Clyde alone is only somewhat resolved, having made it back to Ma, but left apparently with scalpel suspended over his leg.

And I frankly could not follow the various intricacies in Eugenia's racial makeup. At one point she is fair of face, elsewhere she has unnaturally curly hair.

While I was reading this book I heard a radio story about two books that featured forbidden racial love during the civil war period, and thought this book would be mentioned, but it was not, so it is apparently an inviting topic, but there is no big payoff in this particular telling.

I admired the things the Australian-born author got right, and cringed at the things she got wrong, and at the sudden colloquialisms/idioms (Australian?) that I had never seen in my reading life.

If you are interested in reading this book, you can have mine.

I read "The Road From Chapel Hill" after the sequel "Child of the South." (At that time I was not aware that is was a continuation of a previous book written by Joanna Catherine Scott.) But I was glad that I read both books. It gave me a better insight of what happened historical and political. And above all the fascinating, growing love story of the mulatto girl, Eugenia May, and the ex-slave Tom. With the farm boy, Clyde, the three people traveled a long cruel road that often, hearbreakingly, crossed. Joanna Scott did a great job researching the history of the South. It's a gripping story that every history buff and romance fan should read.