Interracial love themes in the latest Civil War books

By D. G. Martin
Posted Thursday, May 31, 2007

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Chapel Hill, NC - Are you ready for another novel that is set in the Carolinas during Civil War times and deals with themes of love across racial lines?

Last year, three of North Carolina’s most important writers published important books in this genre. Charles Frazier’s “Thirteen Moons” is about a white man’s love for a Cherokee woman. There are also cross currents of romantic and sexual relationships between whites and blacks, as there were in Frazier’s “Cold Mountain.”

In Lee Smith’s “On Agate Hill,” the main character, Molly Petree, has a secret patron, a former Confederate officer, who goes to Brazil when the Civil War ends. His marriage to a black Brazilian woman becomes an important part of the story.

Interracial love is at the core of David Payne’s “Back to Wando Passo.” The romantic attraction of whites and blacks to each other drives this complex and very rich story.

Someday, social and literary historians will ask and try to answer this question: What is it about our times that prompts so many of our best contemporary North Carolina authors to write about interracial love and sex and set those stories in Civil War times?

Two other North Carolina authors have new books in this genre. In “Cold Running Creek,” Zelda Lockhart tells the poignant story of a woman of mixed white, black, and American Indian blood. As a young girl she is raised as a part of a privileged slave owning family. When the Civil War begins, her family’s circumstances change. She learns that she is not the daughter of her “mother.” Instead, she is the child of a relationship between her father and one of his slaves. When her father’s property is sold to pay his debts, she finds herself a slave on an adjoining plantation.

Another Civil War novel, “The Road from Chapel Hill” by Joanna Catherine Scott, treats the interracial themes subtly, but also very powerfully.

She follows the war through the intersecting experiences of three young characters: Eugenia, Clyde and Tom. Eugenia Mae Spotswood grew up on a plantation near Wilmington. Her father’s financial failure forces them to move to Gold Hill, near Salisbury, where he works in the mines.

Clyde Bricket lives on a farm near Chapel Hill and dreams of growing up to be a captain of a slave patrol. As a youngster he helps capture Tom, a runaway slave from a nearby farm.

Later, Tom is sold to the owner of the Gold Hill mines, who resells him to Eugenia’s father. Eugenia and Tom develop a strong attraction to each other. When she learns that her father is planning to sell Tom, she sets him free and sends him away. Ultimately, he finds his way to New Bern where he joins the Union Army, but he never forgets Eugenia.

When the Confederates kill his father, Clyde also joins the Union army. He is captured and winds up in the prison camp in Salisbury. After escaping, he finds shelter in a “safe house” where Eugenia has found work as a nurse. At the end of the war, Clyde and Eugenia make their way to Clyde’s family farm near Chapel Hill, where Eugenia hopes to find some trace of Tom, whom she still loves. Eugenia complicates the story by coming to believe that she might have a mixed race heritage and resolves to find her “true mother.”

Not since “Cold Mountain” does a Civil War novel “visit” so much of our state. “The Road from Chapel Hill” travels to Wilmington, the mines of Gold Hill, Salisbury, Chapel Hill, Eastern North Carolina’s longleaf pine forests, New Bern, and more. It is a wonderful trip, almost so engaging that the reader can forget about the novel’s strong racial undercurrents.

Almost. I still come back to that question the scholars of the future will be asking: Why have contemporary North Carolina writers found romance across racial lines during Civil War times to be such a compelling topic?

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D.G. Martin is the host of UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at 5:00 p.m. Check his blog and view prior programs at www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch/

 

This week’s (June 3) guest is Will Blythe, author of “To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry.”

Upcoming NC Bookwatch programs on UNC-TV at 5pm, Sundays:

 

Sunday, June 3, at 5 PM
Will Blythe
To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever

Sunday, June 10, at 5 PM
John Hart
King of Lies

Sunday, June 17, at 5 PM
Sarah Dessen
Just Listen

Sunday, June 24, at 5 PM
Kristin Henderson
While They're at War

Sunday, July 1, at 5 PM
David Payne
Back to Wando Passo