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Prince Edward: A Novel, by Dennis McFarland
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A young boy's life-and that of the Southern town he lives in-is dramatically changed over the course of a single historic summer in this unforgettable novel
In August of 1959, Benjamin Rome is ten years old, and his hometown of Farmville, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, is immersed in a frenzy of activity. The Supreme Court has ordered the state to desegregate its public schools; on the heels of the failed "massive resistance" movement, the county has instead voted to close them. With only a few weeks in which to establish a private, whites-only system, most of Ben's family is involved in the effort: his grandfather, Daddy Cary, has the ringleaders making speeches at his sixty-fifth birthday party; his father and his older brother "borrow" Farmville High's lights for the new football field; his mother volunteers at the library book drive.
Come September, the Negro children will have no schools to attend, and that includes Ben's close friend Burghardt, the son of the hired hand who works on Daddy Cary's farm. Ben has always known that the lives of Negroes and whites are separated by a "color line," but none of what he has known seems to make sense anymore. When events lead to an explosive climax, Ben finds himself facing choices beyond his years; it will be a long time before he begins to understand all he learns that summer-one of the hottest on record, and, for him, the longest and most important.
In this, his fifth and finest book, Dennis McFarland evokes, with his customary art and compassion, a wrenching chapter in our nation's history.
In August of 1959, Benjamin Rome is ten years old, and his hometown of Farmville, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, is immersed in a frenzy of activity. The Supreme Court has ordered the state to desegregate its public schools; on the heels of the failed "massive resistance" movement, the county has instead voted to close them. With only a few weeks in which to establish a private, whites-only system, most of Ben's family is involved in the effort: his grandfather, Daddy Cary, has the ringleaders making speeches at his sixty-fifth birthday party; his father and his older brother "borrow" Farmville High's lights for the new football field; his mother volunteers at the library book drive.
Come September, the Negro children will have no schools to attend, and that includes Ben's close friend Burghardt, the son of the hired hand who works on Daddy Cary's farm. Ben has always known that the lives of Negroes and whites are separated by a "color line," but none of what he has known seems to make sense anymore. When events lead to an explosive climax, Ben finds himself facing choices beyond his years; it will be a long time before he begins to understand all he learns that summer-one of the hottest on record, and, for him, the longest and most important.
In this, his fifth and finest book, Dennis McFarland evokes, with his customary art and compassion, a wrenching chapter in our nation's history.
In August of 1959, Benjamin Rome is ten years old, and his hometown of Farmville, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, is immersed in a frenzy of activity. The Supreme Court has ordered the state to desegregate its public schools; on the heels of the failed "massive resistance" movement, the county has instead voted to close them. With only a few weeks in which to establish a private, whites-only system, most of Ben's family is involved in the effort: his grandfather, Daddy Cary, has the ringleaders making speeches at his sixty-fifth birthday party; his father and his older brother "borrow" Farmville High's lights for the new football field; his mother volunteers at the library book drive.
Come September, the Negro children will have no schools to attend, and that includes Ben's close friend Burghardt, the son of the hired hand who works on Daddy Cary's farm. Ben has always known that the lives of Negroes and whites are separated by a "color line," but none of what he has known seems to make sense anymore. When events lead to an explosive climax, Ben finds himself facing choices beyond his years; it will be a long time before he begins to understand all he learns that summer-one of the hottest on record, and, for him, the longest and most important.
In this, his fifth and finest book, Dennis McFarland evokes, with his customary art and compassion, a wrenching chapter in our nation's history.
- Sales Rank: #444141 in Books
- Published on: 2004-05-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.68" h x 1.36" w x 6.34" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 368 pages
From Publishers Weekly
McFarland is a novelist of quiet eloquence (Singing Boy; The Music Room) whose powers of careful observation and refusal to venture into melodrama are particularly evident in his latest, a picture of that fateful summer of 1959 when Prince Edward County in Virginia closed its public schools rather than open them by court order to black children. The story is told through the eyes of 10-year-old Benjamin Rome, son of a segregationist chicken farmer, whose best friend is Burghardt, a bright black youngster who shares his dreary farm chores. It is told through Benjamin's eyes, but not in his voice; McFarland does not attempt any of the kind of ventriloquism so popular these days, but writes as an intelligent adult seeing with the limited vision of a boy Ben's age as his mother and father squabble; his older sister, Lainie, goes off for a wonderfully described abortion; and older brother Al tries to stay on the sidelines in the racial battle shaping up. McFarland has introduced some of the real local characters of the time into his story, but just as convincing is Ben's grandfather Daddy Cary, presented in a remarkable portrait of elderly and self-indulgent Southern delinquency. The foreground of this fine and affecting novel is alive with the sights and sounds of a sweltering Virginia summer, but it is the author's real achievement to make it simultaneously clear that in the barely perceived background a world is turning upside down.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This evocative novel depicts the white power structure's cruel response to the Brownv. Board of Education decision: shutting down the county's public schools from 1959 to 1964. Ben Rome describes the tense summer of 1959 in Prince Edward County, VA, when he was living on his segregationist father's chicken farm. The 10-year-old is bewildered and fascinated by frantic efforts to establish a system of whites-only private education before the fall term begins. Indulging a vague ambition of becoming a spy, he eavesdrops and snoops on the adults, learning more than he bargains for as he observes how community anxiety intensifies troubles among the complex characters populating his universe. His sister Lainie is depressed about giving up college for marriage and an unwanted pregnancy, his parents rage at one another, his older brother becomes increasingly furtive, and the "teasing" that Ben endures from his powerful, malevolent paternal grandfather escalates from humiliating to perverse. Most worrying is the plight of Ben's friend Burghardt, the youngest member of a black tenant family, whose fearless Granny Mays is determined he will get an education no matter how threatening the obstacles. As recalled in the adult Ben's measured, lucid voice, a significant time and place come to life as the Romes and their neighbors struggle in a world about to change irrevocably. An author's note comments on the story's historical context and on the real-life figures who appear in it. A good choice for pairing with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (Lippincott, 1961) for classroom or book-group discussions.–Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Summer 1959 was sweltering in Prince Edward County, Virginia, but it wasn't just the humidity that had the locals hot under the collar. The public schools were closing--a daring attempt to defy federally forced integration. McFarland tells the story of that summer through the eyes of 10-year-old Benjamin Rome, who watches the fevered activities of the adults around him--his bigoted chicken-farmer father, his good-ole-boy brother, his melancholy pregnant sister, his tyrannical grandfather-- with a certain detachment, concerned mainly about how their activities might impinge on his life and that of his best friend, Burghardt, the son of Benjamin's father's black hired hand. McFarland shows admirable restraint in telling this emotionally charged story; he draws effectively on the historical record, including several real-life supporting characters, but it is the family drama that draws us in and reminds us how history is made while ordinary people are cleaning out the chicken coops. The subject matter suggests To Kill a Mockingbird, of course, but the nicely modulated tone will also remind readers of Larry Watson's Montana 1948. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
a fast paced novel
By L. Fort
This novel kept me wondering what was going to happen next. Was mean Daddy Cary going to get what was coming to him? Was Lainie going to continue dreaming of getting away? I loved Granny Mays, I loved her talk in the woods.
this is an excellent book, partially based on fact.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
likable, fast-paced, good voice, sharp detail
By B. Capossere
Price Edward enters into familiar territory with the coming-of-age in the racist South novel, set in this case in Prince Edward county after they have decided to close their public schools and open private ones rather than integrate. Here the narrator is 10-yr-old Benjamin Rome, whose family include (take a breath): a pregnant, married-to-absent-husband-and-not-in-love older sister; a thieving, rakishly charming, on-the-surface-racist-but-somewhat-more-complex-underneath older brother; a distant, harsh segregationist father and more-softly distant sorrowful mother (neither of whom is happy in marriage); and finally, Big Daddy Cary-his grandfather, the sternly crazy or crazily stern patriarch of the family who also happens to be a child molester. Not family but deeply in the mix as well are the Black family who live in the Cary's tenant house: Ben's childhood friend Burghardt who faces the prospect of no school, Burghardt's dad Julian who works for Ben's father, and Burghardt's grandmother, sorrow and dignity personified.
McFarland is working within a well-known genre here, which causes some difficulties, a genre which unfortunately for others has a true classic within it (To Kill a Mockingbird). This is not as moving or as deeply felt as Mockingbird, but of course that could be said about 99 percent of the books out there. And Prince Edward has its major differences with Lee's book. In Mockingbird, Scout's family fights the good fight whereas Ben is surrounded by a family who is all over the map: his father and grandfather are segregationists, actively so. His brother seems to be on the surface, but, without giving details, is shown to be a much more complex read than that. His mother seems just out of it, happily oblivious, while his older sister rages in frustration, declaring at one point that their racist actions (or tolerance of such) literally is making her physically sick. On the other side, Burghardt is just coming of an age to understand how raw the feelings of most whites toward him are (one of the more moving scenes is when he finally understands this), Julian is of the "take what you have and don't complain to make things worse" mode, and Granny is a model of dignity and fortitude and intelligence. Within that mix, Benjamin finds it hard to find his moorings, and in fact, one of the nice touches of the novel is that he never fully does, at least not at that age, to the dismay of his older narrating self.
The characters are mostly sharply drawn as one would expect from McFarland, descriptions are all vividly detailed with wonderful small touches, and people act as people act, rather than act to serve the purpose of plot or theme. A problem is that working in such a familiar genre means some of the characters are just that, a bit too familiar: the persistently dignified older Black woman, the fawning Black man, the crazy old patriarch, etc. I'm not sure McFarland completely solves this problem.
The subplot with Big Daddy Cary, Ben's grandfather, makes for a nice parallel story to the larger issues, but at times seems a bit too pat for that purpose. It feels both utterly believable and natural and also a bit contrived. His sister's story with regard to her husband and her pregnancy on the other hand seems to work better, though some may find it overkill.
The book is well-paced, a quick read, with some moving scenes, a nice complexity of character and situation, and an ending that is, if not fully resolved or happy, more true to life. And the voice is consistently spot on throughout. If McFarland doesn't transcend the genre, he does make good use of it, turning it to his own purposes for the most part. Recommended.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
coming to terms with the past:: a footnote to shame
By Parke Muth
Dennis McFarland's Prince Edward takes us back to a time and place where race pervades almost every move, every sound out of every mouth, every thought. 1959 in Prince Edward County, Virginia is a time when freedom is a word, but a forced choice is what surrounds every abstraction.
It is the form of the forced choice that is not a choice (for example the robber's "your money or your life" is not really a choice although it has the form of a choice), which structures the characters' lives--all African-Americans, the boys on the edge of adolescence, women stuck in distressed or not existent marriages. McFarland recreates from fact and imagination a world in which we see souls having to come to terms--having to name--the loss of choice. At the same time, the major characters choose not to name Names, choose to keep knowledge unforgiven, hidden, unsaid, but never undone.
Until, literally, now. It is the story of Benjamin Rome. He tells it, lives it, and sees it. He tells us what could never be said in 1959 during massive resistance, during the days of hatred simply based on race. The tale is a footnote of shame; each member of the Rome family burns in some way while the town of Farmville disintegrates (in all senses of the word). And there are all kinds of shame running throughout the book. And all kinds of ways the truth is subverted, glossed over, or left out.
This bildungsroman is not so much a tale of a pilgrim's progress as it is an education into the ways society educates its young (and, for the African Americans, the way society chooses not to give them a right to be educated).
But I've left the best for last. I've made it seem that the book is a kind of allegory and there's perhaps a bit of that. What is truly great though, are the characters who don't give a damn about the abstract. The beauty of the prose and the details of character make us want to get closer, to sneak a peek at these lives. And reading is a form of spying, and observation is central to this book, the scenes in which we see others seeing several forms of primal scene. We have to think of Lynch's Blue Velvet to understand how many horrors underlie the American Landscape. The more important predecessor to this book is, of course, To Kill A Mockingbird. Lee's masterpiece cannot be outdone but its stark contrasts could stand a bit more humanity. McFarland has done what no one has dared do. He's taken some of the themes of that work and made it more complex, more nuanced, and more real. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in character, story, and the true history of our heritage. I hope schools, especially here in Virginia, will take this book to class. I celebrate the author's courage, talent, and humanity. You will too.
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