They want to dream their heroes true they want their heroes all heroic with no feet of clay and they are astonished, angered, hurt if some one speaks the grim, forgotten truth. This sort of falsehood appeals to some folk. We slur over and explain away his inconsistencies and at last there begins to appear, not the real man, but the tradition of the man–remote, immense, perfect, cold and dead! We seek to forget all that was small and mean and unpleasant and remember the fine and brave and good. We yearn in our imperfection toward Perfection–sinful, we envisage Righteousness.Īs a result of this, no sooner does a great man die than we begin to whitewash him. Highly recommended.We love to think of the Great as flawless.

Jeffers’s prose flows like a powerful river, drawing the reader into the current of Ailey’s life and the lives of her ancestors. Other readers will rejoice, hearing a story that resonates with their own past told so masterfully. The struggles, loves, and sufferings of Ailey’s people open an intimate window on painful chapters in American history which some readers may not be familiar with.

I devoured this amazing novel, but now yearn to go back again, slowly re-read and savor the book, as rich and sweet as the golden juice and flesh of the peaches that grow on Miss Rose’s farm. Ailey’s tale intertwines with those of her ancestors: Nila, Micco, Aggie, Nick, the twins Rabbit and Eliza, and so many other forefathers and mothers, and in the telling weaves a rich and deeply textured tapestry of story. Summers are spent in the South with her grandmother, Miss Rose, and beloved Uncle Root. They spend winters in the city, where Geoff works as a doctor and Belle teaches school. We watch Ailey grow, and learn the stories of her sisters, her father, her mother. This magical novel teases out strands of many histories: Ailey’s own journey to maturity, the lives of her immediate family, and those of her ancestors on land the white man stole from the indigenous people and then named Chickasaw. Ailey Pearl Garfield is a lover of books, a child whose lineage stretches back to Africa, the Creek Indians, and settlers who arrived with Oglethorpe to colonize what we now know as the state of Georgia. In 1973 a baby girl is born to Belle and Geoff Garfield.

The love songs web dubois