Review by Booklist Review
After the Civil War, three souls cross paths in Chicago. One is a free black woman, Madge, who can no longer stand the enmity of her bitter mother and aunts in Tennessee and goes to Chicago to continue her trade as a herbalist. Another is Sadie, a young white woman from Pennsylvania who is made to marry a near stranger, ostensibly to get her out of the reach of wartime violence but also, she suspects, in return for a healthy payment to her financially strapped father. When her new husband dies suddenly, she finds a calling as a medium, connecting the grieving with their loved ones swallowed by war. The last is Hemp, a freed slave who stayed on at the Kentucky plantation in case his wife, sold before emancipation, would try to find him there. Each one struggles to find true freedom in their new circumstances. They struggle to find a balm for their pain and to be a balm to others. Through diverse means spirituality, medicine, or simply allowing themselves to love they seek to transcend the ravages of personal and national history.--Weber, Lynn Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
When Madge, a freeborn black woman from Tennessee skilled in the art of making healing ointments, teas, and balms from herbs and bark, takes a maid's position with Sadie, an unhappy, white widow in Chicago who speaks with the dead, both women are hesitant to reveal their secrets, remembering past hurts. The two main male characters are equally troubled. Sadie's doctor friend, Michael, is racked with guilt over not enlisting during the Civil War, and Hemp, a former slave, has to fight off his feelings of attraction to Madge while he searches for his wife, who was sold off before the war. In their individual ways, they are all walking wounded-in need of spiritual soothing. The author deftly weaves her characters' longings with the gritty realities of American life after war's devastations. VERDICT No sophomore slump is in evidence here. Readers who were captivated by Perkins-Valdez's first novel, Wench, will be intrigued by the post-Civil War lives of three Southern transplants to Chicago. [See Prepub Alert, 11/10/14.]-Laurie Cavanaugh, Holmes P.L., Halifax, MA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
