Stand The Storm
In Stand The Storm, set in Civil War era Washington, D.C., I wanted to accomplish a narrative that created a fuller picture of urban enslavement in Washington, D.C. at mid-nineteenth-century. I wrote also about the Compensated Emancipation Act enacted by Abraham Lincoln that freed enslaved persons residing in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 1862, nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation. Now, much to my surprise, I’ve learned facts about my direct ancestor who gained his freedom under this edict along with his mother and grandmother. I’m delighted to learn that an event I’d written about in my fiction had a true historical impact on my family.
Published in 2008, Stand The Storm has recently become more personal to me and my family. Through the efforts of an intrepid family genealogist, I’ve discovered an ancestor who is documented as having been emancipated under the District of Columbia’s Compensated Emancipation Act of April, 1862. He was a ten year old boy at the time.
Read about Alfred Clarke and my reactions to this discovery: https://bit.ly/3HcuOHR
“Passionate, dramatic, and uplifting” (Washington Post), Stand the Storm is an “evocative, historically rich” novel (Time) from the author of River, Cross My Heart set among the free African American community of pre-Civil War Washington, DC.
Even though Sewing Annie Coats and her son, Gabriel, have managed to buy their freedom, their lives are still marked by constant struggle and sacrifice. Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, where the Coatses operate a tailor’s shop and laundry, is supposed to be a “promised land” for former slaves but is effectively a frontier town, gritty and dangerous, with no laws protecting black peopleThe remarkable emotional energy with which the Coatses wage their daily battles-as they negotiate with their former owner, as they assist escaped slaves en route to freedom, as they prepare for the encroaching war, and as they strive to love each other enough-is what propels Stand the Storm and makes the novel’s tragic denouement so devastating.
“A gripping novel about a family’s heart-wrenching journey out of slavery.” —Baltimore Sun
River, Cross My Heart
River, Cross My Heart, my debut novel, is a very personal narrative. It is based on my parents' recollections, especially my mother's, of growing up in the African American community of Georgetown, in what is now a very affluent neighborhood. Young Johnnie Mae Bynum, coming of age in the segregated, racially prejudicial Washington, D.C. of the early twentieth century, is coping with the drowning death of her younger sister, for which she feels responsible. Selected by Oprah's Book Club in November 1999, River, Cross My Heart was also named one of the essential books about Washington, D.C.
“River, Cross My Heart” is also a narrative of parental grief after the sudden tragic death of a child. This is a landscape that I know personally following the accidental death of my son. River, Cross My Heart weighs the effect of Clara Bynum's absence on the people she has left behind: her parents, Alice and Willie Bynum, torn between the old world of their rural North Carolina home and the new world of the city, to which they have moved in search of a better life for themselves and their children; the friends and relatives of the Bynum family in the Georgetown neighborhood they now call home; and, most especially, Clara's sister, twelve-year-old Johnnie Mae, who must come to terms with the powerful and confusing emotions sparked by her sister's death as she struggles to decide and discover the kind of woman she will become.
"A compelling novel...Clarke brings to life a whole neighborhood of vivid personalities."--USA Today
"A sweet read...sweet like homemade ice cream from a hand-cranked machine, and just as rich."--Holly Bass, Washington Post Book World
"A genuine masterpiece...full of grace and beauty and profound insights...It bears traces of Eudora Welty's charm and Toni Morrison's passion."--Michael Shelden, Baltimore Sun
"A warm, graceful first novel...with a host of well-drawn and appealing characters...Clarke brings an affectionate eye and beautifully restrained prose to her fictional archaeology."--John Perry, San Francisco Chronicle
"Seldom do I find a novel that I can recommend to everyone...I'm delighted to say that River, Cross My Heart fills the bill."--Sandra Scofield, Chicago Tribune
“This highly accomplished debut novel reverberates with ideas, impassioned lyricism, and poignant historical detail as it captures an essential and moving portrait of the Washington, DC community. A compelling novel...Clarke brings to life a whole neighborhood of vivid personalities."—USA Today
Read the eBook: https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/detail/95833075/
Listen to “River, Cross My Heart”, narrated by https://www.audible.com/pd/River-Cross-My-Heart-Audiobook/1980067015
Angels Make Their Hope Here
I began work on my third novel in earnest as soon as I saw the photograph. She was unidentified when I first encountered her. She was so beautiful. More than beautiful, her gaze was compelling. She expressed a forthright quality that I hadn’t seen before in a photograph of this vintage, a photograph of someone like her. Then there were so many things that were emblematic of the period: her wasp waist, her pretty, sparkling earrings, her dress, her demeanor, her hair/hairstyle --- Wow, I loved her hairdo.
She became the inspirational image that helped to guide my work on Angels Make Their Hope Here. She became the self-emancipated young woman at the heart of my story.
ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE is set in an imagined community in a mountainous area roughly north and west of Paterson, New Jersey in the 19th century. Russell’s Knob is a hidden, secretive place settled by people who might be described today as bi-racial or tri-racial. The inhabitants describe themselves as runaways and stay-aways. Russell’s Knob maintains a tradition of harboring fugitives from enslavement and is home to the legendary Underground Railroad conductor, Duncan Smoot. The residents of Russell’s Knob are people who reject the limiting definitions of racial identity and character of 19th century, mid-Atlantic, North America and live outside of the “white” towns. They are spoken of derisively as “amalgamators” and “race mixers” though their true history is as complex as is the history of settlement in the region.
Russell's Knob is not paradise. But by 1863 this New Jersey highlands settlement is home to a diverse population of blacks and whites and reds who have intermarried and lived in relative harmony for generations. It is a haven for Dossie Bird, who has escaped north along the Underground Railroad and now feels the embrace of the Smoot family: Duncan (so much older than Dossie; could he expect her to be his helpmeet?), his reticent sister, his exuberant nephews, and a circle of friends that includes the local spirit woman, Noelle. Tentatively, Dossie begins to lay down roots-until an act of violence propels her away from Russell's Knob and eventually into the mayhem of New York City's mean streets.
Book Review: 'Angels Make Their Hope Here' - NPR
https://www.npr.org › 2014/07/22 › book-review-angels-...
Jul 22, 2014 — Alan Cheuse reviews Angels Make Their Hope Here