Rating: 
Summary: bland, unmoving, cookie-cutter story
Review: This well-crafted novel is written as an editor's transcription of the oral memoirs of Jane Pittman, a 110-year old woman and former slave who reminisces about her life and times. Miss Jane, in her rambling, often opinionated, but always endearing narrative style, not only tells her life story but also that of the history of the black people from slavery up to their struggles for civil rights in the 1960s. Around ten years old when freed from slavery, Jane decides to head to Ohio to find the friendly Yankee soldier who was kind to her when his troop passed through. Although she never gets out of Louisiana, she saves a young boy, taking him under her wing when the Confederate soldiers slaughter his mother, and sets off to find a better life for the two of them. Along with the other newly freed slaves, she deals with problems in finding shelter, jobs, and education. As she ages, she becomes the matriarch of her community, and in that role provides support, inspiration, and commonsense guidance to others as they seek their rightful place in society. Jane is a colorful character with lots of spirit and determination. Her story is full of humor, wisdom, and irony. The emphasis of the book shifts about halfway through from Jane herself to the story of the people that pass through her life. Some chapters depart from the main story to cover a particular person or incident she observes. She discusses the discrimination and violence the blacks faced in the south. She is witness to the relationship between blacks and whites, including a doomed love interest. She chronicles civil rights advances and mentions the efforts of such black leaders as Washington, Douglass, and King. She speaks of the Freedom Riders and civil rights marches. One clever chapter digresses to discuss one of the floods in her town that was caused, according to Jane, by man's egotistical notion that he can change the course of rivers. Because the story covers 100 years of Jane's recollections, time passes quickly in some spots, leaving large gaps of time missing from her life. I found it was sometimes difficult to determine how old she was when a new chapter began and how far forward time had passed. In spite of this, the novel is educational, entertaining, and uplifting, and would be an excellent book to teach older children about black history. Eileen Rieback
| 
