"Henry Townsend, raised as a slave in antebellum Virginia, grows up to be a landowner and slaveowner himself. This wondrous, gut-wrenching novel describes how that came to be, and much more besides. Edward P. Jones' narrative has the all-encompassing scope of a great 19th-century novel, but his incisive, compassionate prose illuminates lives and questions that the Old Guard wouldn't dare to touch. This book will change you."
Publisher Harper Paperbacks
Publication Date 2004-06-01
Section Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Nell P.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780060557553
In one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Edward P. Jones, two-time National Book Award finalist, tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order and chaos ensues. In a daring and ambitious novel, Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all of its moral complexities.
