The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, is an intricate and compelling look into both the horrors of slavery and the permanence
of family. This splendid winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is so fluent and vivid that I hated it to end.
The book's setting is rural Virginia, Manchester County, in the the 1860s, and chronicles the life of Henry Townsend and his family. Townsend, a black farmer and former slave, operating in the shadow of his former owner, the
powerful William Robbins, runs his plantation with careful discipline, making certain the laws of the land are upheld. But when an unexpected death takes him away, the farm and its responsibilities are passed down to his wife Caldonia, who has a difficult time sustaining her husband's dream.
Torn between her distaste for slavery and her mother's
insistence that she uphold the "family legacy," disruption and disorder slowly begins to tear the farm and its inhabitants apart.
It is a story of family, hope, betrayal and redemption, one that makes you cheer one moment and cry the next. Jones' vivid picture of slavery in its waning days is remarkably powerful and horribly clear--the most poignant look at the condition of slavery I have ever read. If you have a chance, I strongly suggest that you pick up a copy and give it a look.