Rating: 
Summary: Very Interesting
Review: Well written and full of flavor. It opens our eyes to the true lives of the slaves and gives compassion and understanding to the characters.Very good choice to read!
Rating: 
Summary: Worth The Time
Review: While the book seemed to loose steam near the end, it was well worth the time to read. Most of the main characters are well written and vivid. My only disappointment was Emily--the last of the women portrayed. That she was chronologically the most recent made me feel she should have been better developed, as there are surely people still alive who remember her. This is a minor inconvenience, however. The women are bright and alive and the history of the time and place shine in Tademy's writing
Rating: 
Summary: I guess you had to be there?
Review: Tademy, self-described as a former executive of a Silicon Valley conglomerate, stops to consider where it all started in Cane River, Louisiana and put it into words. Inspired by a short, typewritten explanation composed by a distant cousin in 1975, she resigns her lofty position to research and elaborate on her cousin's story. She describes a family history of multiple generations of women: some born into slavery, some not. In between the facts that she has meticulously researched, she adds fictitious conversations and day-to-day events in the lives of her ancestors to compliment the account. The bottom line: this is a real person's real family history, with a little fictitious dialogue and day-to-day happenings thrown in, to fill in the gaps. I am absolutely certain that Tademy poured her heart and soul into this pet project and her family appreciates every bit of her effort. But I guess it's like describing a story to someone you know and seeing that they have no appreciation for what you've just told them. You would close your story with the comment, "I guess you had to be there." As dear reader absorbs her story, he finds that a description of the personalities of each character comes out somewhat lifeless and vague. Having not personally met and known all of them, this would obviously be difficult to describe. It would be like looking at a two hundred year old portrait and knowing what made that person happy and why. Tademy can only base her thoughts on what she has heard or documented. Considering the enormous number of characters in her story, it was difficult to keep them straight and think of the personalities that go with each one. There were just too many for the unfamiliar audience to comprehend. Although I commend her for her effort, I can't recommend this as being an entertaining book. Unless Tademy finds herself rich with ideas for stories spun from characters in her family history, I don't expect to see anything more to come from her. She will go down in the annals of publishing history as just another one-hit wonder.
Rating:
Summary: Survival Story
Review: Lalita Tademy tells of how in the search for her ancestors one in particular, Philomene grabbed her and seem to urge her to follow her quest and bring their lives to meaning through the words of a book. It was such a compulsion that she quit her high paying, high powered day job as Vice President at Sun Microsystems to research and write the saga of Cane River and I as a reader am glad she did. The story starts at a plantation in Cane River Louisiana in 1834 and follows the brave women who fought for the survival of their family, Elizabeth, Suzette, Philomene and Emily. The goal of all the women is to insure the survival of the family which is often a difficult goal for those who do not own their freedom. It is one which requires compromises and difficult sacrifices. Lalita Tademy makes these seem all the more real and genuine, because it is the story of her family. Cane River while neither fully a novel or a history serves to illustrate how difficult lives were for those who were enslaved during our early American history. I am thankful that Tademy has taken the time to tell her families story. It is a story which we should all be aware of.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting glimpse into early Louisiana and slavery
Review: This book was very interesting from its historical perspective. Having been based on actual diary entries it has some basis in fact that I found fascinating. Interestingly, although it was the author's attempt to capture the reality of the events that leads me to my favorable review, this is also the cause of the 3 of 5 star rating. The book read as a wandering account and lacked a developed plot. I suppose my Louisiana roots may have influenced my interest so I would warn those looking for an engaging historical novel to skip this one. I usually skip the foreword of many books; but read this one. It is very interesting how this novel came to be written.
Rating:
Summary: An intimate view of one families struggle to survive!
Review: The book is moving not because of the history but because it is so personal. The writer is sharing about her life, granted there is fiction mixed with fact, the author has brought her ancestors back to life. This is very original and creative. The fact that she made something positive from all that pain and suffering is to be praised. I now have an urge to learn of my past history and make something creative come from it. The way her ancestors tried to hide their color was a point of view that I was not familiar with. The women wanted their children to mate with men that were white so the color would be erased and their children would be allowed more priviliges, fitting into the valued white community. It was the author's grandfather who decided to change that train of thought and married a negro and allowed the color to stay with the next generation. The grandfather walked through the shame that had been placed on all blacks throughout time. The writing was okay but the creativity and realness of this novel is what stood out and brought me to my decision of 4 stars. This book has a high focus on strong women and validates a true feeling of sisterhood between females. Lisa Nary
Rating: 
Summary: Caveat lector
Review: This is not really history and it's not really a novel. The story isn't really interesting enough to be a novel--you read it avidly at first because you think it's a "real story"--but as the author notes at the beginning, she changed dates, names, circumstances supposedly to improve the story (well, she should have changed a lot more then). But then when you begin looking at the "evidence" printed as illustrations you notice that she (or her genealogist?) made mistakes in transcribing the French, includes names in her transcriptions that aren't really in the sources, and she repeatedly notes errors in her primary sources as well. To a real historian this smacks of someone changing her sources to make her imagined story fit. Real historians accept that they can't always trace the neat trail they would like to--Tademy just changes things to make them fit her story and thinks, I guess that the reader won't even notice. She doesn't even provide real reproductions of the newspaper articles she shows "photographs" of--they're just transcripts typed in a modern font. Anyway, I found myself wondering how much of the story was at all findable in primary documents. When I decided she more or less made this up out of whole cloth and her ideas of how her descendants could be, I got really bored with the sort of nonexistent plot. If you want real literature about the slave experience, read Alice Walker. If you want real history, read Ball's book about the slaves in his family. This apparent hybrid is neither, and as such it is a waste of time. If I were Jonathan Franzen I would definitely not want anything I wrote on the same list with this work of dubious value.
Rating:
Summary: A Magical Event
Review: This has been one of the best books that I have read in quite a while. I was born in 1962 and missed most of this era, which has provided me such an insight of the South from another point of few other than "Gone With the Wind". It truly touches me that through it all, family was high priority. I find myself flipping back to pictures very frequently because I feel as if I know these people.
Rating:
Summary: What a Story!
Review: What a great book! I could not put it down. Seldom does a book grab me like this one did.
Rating:
Summary: EDUCATIONAL AND INFORMATIVE
Review: What can I say, CANE RIVER, was well written, informative and educational.A real page tuner. I loved it so much, after reading the book I bought the audio cd for me and another copy for my girlfriend's brithday.I give this book Five stars. Can't wait for Lalita Tademy's next book.
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