Come Juneteenth - Hardcover

Rinaldi, Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0152059474 ISBN 13: 9780152059477

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007

Synopsis

Sis Goose is a beloved member of Luli's family, despite the fact that she was born a slave. But the family is harboring a terrible secret. And when Union soldiers arrive on their Texas plantation to announce that slaves have been declared free for nearly two years, Sis Goose is horrified to learn that the people she called family have lied to her for so long. She runs away--but her newly found freedom has tragic consequences.
 
How could the state of Texas keep the news of the Emancipation Proclamation from reaching slaves? In this riveting Great Episodes historical drama, Ann Rinaldi sheds light on the events that led to the creation of Juneteenth, a celebration of freedom that continues today.
Includes an author's note.

About this title

About the Authors

ANN RINALDI is an award-winning author best known for her ability to bring history vividly to life. She lives in central New Jersey.

ANN RINALDI is an award-winning author best known for her ability to bring history vividly to life. She lives in central New Jersey.

From the Inside Flap

For as long as Luli can remember, the Confederate states have been at war with the Union. But the fighting has always been far from the Texas plantation where Luli lives with her pa and ma, her brothers, and her "almost" sister, Ruth, whom everyone calls Sis Goose. Sis Goose was born into slavery, but has been raised as a member of the family. Or so it seems.
When President Lincoln issues his Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery, Luli s family, like hundreds of other Texas slave owners, decides to keep the news a secret. Not even Sis Goose is told that she s free. Then, two years later, one day in June, Union soldiers arrive. And the secret that was so closely guarded threatens to tear the family apart.

Historical novelist Ann Rinaldi paints the story of one family s awakening to the true meaning of freedom and explores the events that led up to the creation of Juneteenth, a celebration of freedom that continues today.

Reviews

Grade 5-7–The author's talent for bringing history to life is vividly showcased in this novel. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Texas slave owners, fearing an uprising, kept the fact a secret. They were finally forced to reveal the truth two and a half years later, on June 19, 1865, which came to be known as Juneteenth and is celebrated to this day. In this story, 14-year-old Luli has grown up with Sis Goose, a young mulatto girl, technically a slave but raised as part of the family. Luli's father is an invalid and her mother is busy running the plantation, so her older brother, Gabriel, has assumed responsibility for her, teaching her to ride and shoot like a boy, and instilling in her a fierce independence. Although Sis Goose is like a sister to Luli, and Gabriel is in love with her, the family does not tell Sis Goose of her freedom, which results in a devastating tragedy. Luli's authentic voice demonstrates Rinaldi's ability to evoke the human side of history, and the novel's evenhanded approach portrays the moral ambiguities of the time fairly and honestly. Believable characters with human strengths and weaknesses, lively writing, and plenty of action and suspense make this book a real page-turner for lovers of historical fiction.–Quinby Frank, Green Acres School, Rockville, MD
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Two years after Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, Texas slaves finally learned that they were free. Rinaldi personalizes the shocking Reconstruction history in this gripping novel that focuses on two young Texas women. Thirteen-year-old Luli and slightly older Sis Goose have been raised as sisters by Luli's parents on their Texas plantation. Sis Goose, the daughter of a white steamship captain and a black slave, is technically a slave herself, and when word of emancipation begins to circulate, Luli's family (including older brother Gabe, who has begun an affair with Sis Goose) tell their adopted daughter that the rumors are false. The repercussions of that lie lead to increasingly catastrophic events after the Yankees march in. Writing in Luli's naive, biased voice, Rinaldi focuses sympathetically on the dilemmas of her white characters, and their viewpoints about freedom and bondage will surely challenge contemporary readers. The moral questions are right at the surface, along with the troubling historical facts; readers will want to discuss it all. Suggest Mildred Taylor's The Land (2001) to follow this. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

I was in the pumpkin patch, counting the ones that were good enough for Old Pepper Apron, our cook, to make into bread. I recollect that Pa was happy that he’d gotten one or two cents more on the pound from the cotton Granville had shipped out of Bagdad. And that the fields were being sown with winter oats and rye.

           I looked up and saw Sis Goose standing by the gate, a frown on her lovely face. It was all like some Dutch still life I was learning about from my tutor. Sis twisted her apron in her hands. She always wore a snow-white apron, like I did, even though we had no real household chores.

           “Luli, there’s an old negro man in our barn,” she said.

           For a moment I did not understand. The place was full of negro men: field hands, household help. But the look on her face told me something was amiss.

           “Who is he?”

           “Says he comes from Virginny. Says . . .” and her voice broke.

           “Says what?”

           “Says the negroes are free. That Abraham Lincoln freed them in January of ’63.”

           That rumor again. But with the war there was a different rumor every week. I swallowed. Something on Sis Goose’s face bespoke her distress.

           “Go and get Gabe,” I told her. “He’ll know what
to do.”

           Gabe was in the house, helping Mama decide whether the one hundred bushels of corn she wanted to trade for three pounds of sugar was worth it.

           I went to the horse barn, but I didn’t go in until Gabe and Sis Goose came back.

           “Where’d you come from, Uncle?” Gabe asked the man, who looked old enough to be somebody’s grandfather.

           “Virginny. I comes from Virginny,” came the answer. “From Applegate I come. On the advice of Miz Heather.”

           Applegate was my Virginia grandmother’s plantation.

           Gabe scowled and ran his hands over the back of the man’s mule. It had usa branded on its back. “This is a fine-looking animal. Where’d you get it?”

           “Miz Heather give it to me. And say to come here. She give me a message for y’all.”

           “What message?” from Gabe.

           “She say that no matter what, I shud tell y’all that Mister Linkum done freed the slaves nigh over a year ago now.”

           “Did she now?” Gabe’s voice was tight, forced in its casualness. “Well, to my knowledge my grandmother never had a mule with usa branded on its back. This mule is government property,” Gabe told him.

           “I came from Virginny,” the old man insisted. “Miz Heather, she tell me . . .”

           “Yes, yes, I know, that Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves. I’ll tell you what, Uncle—” Then Gabe stopped and looked at us. “Go on into the house,” he directed us. “Tell no one about this. I’ll handle it.”

           We obeyed. I said nothing to Sis Goose about it. But she did to me. “Do you think he’s right?” she asked.

           “I don’t know. I mean, we would have heard. If not us, then Gabe or Granville. I’m sure we would have heard.”

           And so I lied to my best friend, my sister, who trusted me. Because I had heard of this before. But both Gabe and Granville had ordered me not to speak of it.

           The slaves free! I could not think on it all at once. It assaulted my spirit. It gave lie to everything I knew in my life.

           All Pa’s people in the fields could put down their hoes and walk off if they wanted to. We’d never have another corn or cotton crop. The sweet potatoes and white potatoes and vegetables needing dirt banks to keep them safe from the winter would all be ruined. No more corn shuckings with banjo playing and cider. No one to repair the fences, see to the livestock. In the house, no one to keep Mama’s Chippendale furniture free of dust or polish the silver or make the beds. Who would do the laundry?

           My mind gave way to hopelessness. And then I remembered what Granville had said the last time a man came to the barn like this. In June of ’63, it had been, right before Gettysburg.

           “You breathe a word of this and you’ll start bloodshed in Texas,” he warned me.

           Granville liked to make dramatic statements like that.

           “I could be free.” Sis Goose stopped walking and looked at me. The news had come over her the same way.

           “And what would you do?” I asked casually.

           She lowered her eyes. Then looked at me almost flirtatiously. “I’d marry Gabe.”

           No, I couldn’t take this, too. I drew in my breath. I’d noticed of late the way he served her at the table before he served himself. How he gave her the best cuts of meat. How he held out her chair. Was he just being a Southern gentleman?

           He didn’t do all that for me. With me he was brusque, moody. Gentle but sealed off. Fool, I told myself. You should have seen it.

           “Has he asked you?” I pushed.

           “Yes. But I can’t, unless I’m free. I told him yes, at the end of the war. He wants to marry now. Because he says then Aunt Sophie can’t sell me. I’d be his wife. But I don’t want to be like my mama, the colored wench of a white man.”

           She spoke fast. And I thought fast. I entered into a covenant with myself then, a promise to lie, even if it killed me. “Well, it’s just a rumor. I’m sorry, Sis Goose. My brothers and my pa would know if it were true.”

           She accepted that. “You’d never lie to me,” she said. “Remember, we’re sisters.”

 

Copyright © 2007 by Ann Rinaldi

 

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Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0152059474
• ISBN 13: 9780152059477
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256