The Known World

Our library is great.  It is well-stocked, new, cool to be in, and has its own children's room with toys and activities and a pet fish named Blueberry.  There are many programs if you want to be involved from reading with your dog to books & babies to traditional storytime. There is even a great coffee shop where we often stop to get a treat.  They have lots of healthy kid-friendly snacks too.  And Big Train chai.  And, you can take your drink into the library. 

On one of my stops into the coffee shop, I inquired about the books on the shelves around the shop.  I found out they were used books that had been donated and were for sale; all profit from their sale goes to the library.  I pulled this one off the shelf, excited to read it because of its content and the fact that it won a Pulitzer.

This book was so hard to get into.  I bet I started to read it a half dozen times before I really got into it.  Mostly because I had a few brain candy books I was reading and whenever I picked this one up it took so long to remember the context, I could only read a few pages before drifting off.  But once I finally got into it, I enjoyed it.

The book's timeline is fluid as are the characters.  The central event is the death of Henry Townsend, a black slave owner (I learned there were African Americans who owned other African Americans).  The story shuttles back and forth among the slaves on his plantation, his early days as a slave himself, the story of his parents, his owners, the local sheriff, and numerous other characters.  That was part of what it made it difficult to get into.  I think if I read it again, I will see how beautifully woven the story truly is.  It is a remarkable story of human character and the things that we both need to see and shudder at.  If you've got some time to sit down and read it, do it...but this is anything but brain candy...consider yourself warned.