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978-0-89587-262-3
0-89587-262-5
$15.95 paperback
6" x 9"
291 pages
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Judge Madison Curtis has just
pronounced the benediction over the grave of his eldest daughter when
two grimy women riding double on a mule enter his driveway.
"Have ye got misfortune,
I wonder?" the elder one calls. "Iffen ye do, I rejoice in
hit."
The Curtises have misfortune
indeed. The Civil War has left them a dead daughter, two dead sons,
vengeful neighbors, and a once-grand home now broken down. Just as
debilitating is Judge Curtis's guilt over his actions in wartime, when
he sacrificed another family to save his own.
The most immediate reminder
of the judge's past sins is a man he once held in bondage, who has
returned to the mountains of western North Carolina after serving with
the Union army. In slavery, the Curtises knew him as Black Gamaliel, but
he now insists on being known by his proper name--Daniel McFee. They
achieve an uneasy peace as Daniel proposes a sharecropping arrangement
and begins a new life in freedom.
But the judge perceives that
the opportunity for true racial reconciliation after the war is being
squandered. Militating against it is an antihero who would elevate the
blacks by crushing the landed whites--a demagogue by day and a killer by
night. He is Nahum Bellamy the Pilot, and he means to hold Judge Curtis
accountable even unto death.
In this, the sequel to his
critically acclaimed novel Hiwassee, Charles F. Price examines
those sacrificed on freedom's altar: carefree Andy Curtis, who returns
from war to assume burdens beyond his capacity; Oliver Price, who must
weigh his responsibility toward his dying wife against the need of his
friends; and foremost, the Curtises' former slaves, who struggle against
bitterness and discover their better selves at an hour of need.
about the author
Charles F. Price's second novel, Freedom's Altar, won the
1999 Sir Walter Raleigh Award, given to the best work of fiction by a
North Carolinian. Price worked as a journalist, urban planner,
management consultant, and Washington lobbyist before publishing the
acclaimed Hiwassee: A Novel of the Civil War in 1996. He lives in
his native western North Carolina mountains, where he is a full-time
writer and teacher. He recently authored a third book entitled The
Cock's Spur which follows the Curtis and Price families
through the end of Reconstruction.
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