Synopsis
Sam Jenks moves to Wilmington, North Carolina in the summer of 1898 and finds racial tension escalating as Negro residents outnumber whites and talk of white supremacy and riots spreads through town
Reviews
No, this is not another sequel to the 1962 movie; it is a complex and convincing (if slightly overwritten) story of a little known incident that took place amidst the chaos of the post-Reconstruction South. The villain is not a twisted individual but rather a twisted society, the upper crust of Wilmington, N.C., in 1898. Alarmed by a burgeoning black middle class and a Fusionist-Republican regime favorable to the black majority, a powerful group drawn from the white establishment plots to take back "their" city. Secret, shifting alliances create confusion and discontent among out-of-work whites, and post-election day violence results in the deaths of numerous black citizens and the expulsion of thousands of others. The kaleidoscopic action is seen through the eyes of a fictional reporter newly arrived from Chicago with his wife, Gray Ellen. Her bafflement reflects Southern white society perfectly ". . . it was like hearing every second word of a question and being expected to come up with a good answer." As the white plotters invent horror stories of dangerous blacks, amass troops and plunge towards violence, blacks walk a thin line between preserving pride and keeping a low profile. Some of the dialogue and asides could have profitably been trimmed, but Gerard's ( Hatteras Light ) well-researched story smartly limns the tangled combination of economic, social and visceral elements that led Wilmington to violence and two years later would lead North Carolina to adopt constitutional amendments that virtually disenfranchised blacks. Caveat lector : epilogues of various characters at the end of the book fail to note which are fictional and which are historical. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Stilted writing and a lack of character development obscure the powerful subject matter of this historical novel by the author of Hatteras Light ( LJ 10/15/86). Sam Jenks comes to Wilmington--in 1898 the largest city in North Carolina--to work for the local newspaper. He and his wife, Gray Ellen, find a city in the throes of racial conflict. A small minority of the white citizens, greatly outnumbered by the generally middle-class black population, feels threatened by that group's growing power. In revenge, they arrange for bands of armed men to attack the mainly innocent and defenseless black populace. Thousands of the survivors, along with their white supporters, flee the city, never to return. Even the interesting and well-rounded character of Gray Ellen cannot bring this novel to life, but regional collections should consider purchase.
- Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Newspaperman Sam Jenks and his schoolteacher wife Gray Ellen arrive in the thriving port city of Wilmington, North Carolina, in the sultry August of 1898; three months later, they are forced to leave after what Gerard's publisher aptly labels "the greatest racial conflagration you've never heard of." Northerners Sam and Gray Ellen find the conflicting elements of Wilmington's white community--its competing political movements and economic elites, plus the unemployed, working-class redshirts--as unfamiliar as those within the city's large African American population: accommodationist businessmen and professionals; the Manlys, whose newspaper insists upon full equality; and the firebrand preacher Ivanhoe Grant, who understands white Wilmington's rage, perhaps because his own is equally powerful. Gerard, director of the professional and creative writing program at UNC-Wilmington, National Public Radio essayist, and author of two other novels, modestly calls Cape Fear Rising "only a storyteller's history." It is more: a well-researched, fascinating narrative that probingly dissects the roots of racism in the U.S., entertaining historical fiction that packs a telling contemporary punch. Mary Carroll
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