Song Yet Sung (Hardcover)

by James McBride (Author) "On a grey morning in March 1850, a colored slave named Liz Spocott dreamed of the future..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Escaped slaves, free blacks, slave-catchers and plantation owners weave a tangled web of intrigue and adventure in bestselling memoirist (The Color of Water) McBride's intricately constructed and impressive second novel, set in pre–Civil War Maryland. Liz Spocott, a beautiful young runaway slave, suffers a nasty head wound just before being nabbed by a posse of slave catchers. She falls into a coma, and, when she awakes, she can see the future—from the near-future to Martin Luther King to hip-hop—in her dreams. Liz's visions help her and her fellow slaves escape, but soon there are new dangers on her trail: Patty Cannon and her brutal gang of slave catchers, and a competing slave catcher, nicknamed The Gimp, who has a surprising streak of morality. Liz has some friends, including an older woman who teaches her The Code that guides runaways; a handsome young slave; and a wild inhabitant of the woods and swamps. Kidnappings, gunfights and chases ensue as Liz drifts in and out of her visions, which serve as a thoughtful meditation on the nature of freedom and offer sharp social commentary on contemporary America. McBride hasn't lost his touch: he nails the horrors of slavery as well as he does the power of hope and redemption. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

Reviewed by David Anthony Durham

James McBride's famous memoir, The Color of Water, was a personal examination of the author's upbringing in a large, biracial family. Looking back at the life of his white, Jewish mother, McBride chronicled a good part of the last century, from the pre-World War II South, to New York through the turbulent '60s, right up to the Clinton era. His first novel, Miracle at St. Anna (which is currently being filmed by Spike Lee), followed a black regiment through turbulent events in Italy late in World War II. It was a book of considerable breadth and character diversity, telling the tales of black and white soldiers, of Italian resistance fighters and peasants, and of Germans watching Hitler's vision die before their eyes.

McBride is just as inclusive and ambitious in his new novel, Song Yet Sung. The book begins: "On a grey morning in March 1850, a colored slave named Liz Spocott dreamed of the future." With that, McBride places us back in a terrible time in American history and introduces a character that would seem to merit our pity: a slave woman in Maryland, trapped in a sinister system while living so very close to freedom. This is the well-documented territory of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. With them in mind, it's easy to assume Liz is praying for her freedom and the chance to have a family of her own.

But her dreams are not so personal. She has been granted the gift (or curse) of prophecy: "And it was not pleasant. She dreamed of Negroes driving horseless carriages on shiny rubber wheels with music booming throughout, and fat black children who smoked odd-smelling cigars and walked around with pistols in their pockets and murder in their eyes . . . and colored men dressed in garish costumes like children, playing odd sporting games and bragging like drunkards -- every bit of pride, decency, and morality squeezed clean out of them."

Sound familiar? With that opening to this powerful novel, McBride makes it clear that he is not just interested in staring into an antique, distant past. This past is living. It is linked to the present, and the work ain't done yet.

Liz has taken a musket ball to the head, killed a dog with her bare hands and been captured -- not by "legitimate" slave catchers, but by a criminal gang run by Patty Cannon, an engaging anti-heroine based on an actual person. With the help of her fellow captives, Liz escapes, and from that point the story's diverse cast is stirred into action, with Liz at the center of the storm.

Patty and her gang are on Liz's trail, but they aren't the only ones. Liz's "owner" wants the beautiful young woman back as well. He hires a retired slave catcher of great renown, Denwood Long (a.k.a. the Gimp). Long is a crotchety loner, "a lean, rangy figure in oilskin hat and jacket" with a past full of pain. He is a master observer who reads truth or lies in the motions of people's hands. Sly and winning when he needs to be, he is also icily threatening when that will get the job done faster.

Not everyone is out to enslave