This week, I have a couple of historical fiction novels to share you! As part of the tour for Two Rivers: De Trouble I Be See, I had the opportunity to review both Two Rivers by Bob Rogers and his earlier novel: First Dark - A Buffalo Soldier's Story. Today, I would like to share my review of Two Rivers: De Trouble I Be See. Check out the book, read my thoughts, learn about the author & enter for a chance to win a prize in the book tour giveaway at the end of this post.
Book Title: Two Rivers: De Trouble I Be See by Bob Rogers
Category: Adult Fiction (18 +), 333 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: BookLocker
Release date: June 19, 2023
Content Rating: R. My book is rated R because of foul language, rape, infanticide, and homicide.
"[Two Rivers is] a fast-paced tale of enslaved people in a land on the brink of war...a novel about the iniquities of slavery in pre-Civil War South Carolina." - Kirkus Reviews
"For me, the standout feature of the work is its ensemble cast and the passion and emotional intelligence that [Bob] Rogers displays in crafting so many different, realistic, and fully fleshed-out viewpoints...Two Rivers is intricately penned with much to experience, be intrigued by, and learn from." - K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite
Rich with history, the geriatric romance in Two Rivers entertains and educates. Without fear of causing “discomfort” to some, Two Rivers takes us deep into the lives of two peoples—Africans and Europeans—in 1854 near Charleston, South Carolina.
In Two Rivers, the parallel courtships of enslaved widow Ella wooing 84-year-old widower Posey and Tiffany Plantation manager James’ pursuit of Jacqueline, daughter of a bank president, reveals the side-by-side lifestyles of enslavers and the enslaved.
Attorney James’ dream was to join the elite planter-banker class by any means necessary. Rebuffed by Congressman William Aiken’s daughter, James turned to Jacqueline. Meanwhile, Angolan Ella was determined to marry Posey, whose ancestry was Igbo.
Though enemies from the day James arrived, both Posey and James respected Senator John C. Calhoun—but for vastly different reasons. For James, Calhoun represented the “rule-maker class” he wanted to join. Posey welcomed Calhoun’s prediction of war between white people.
By 1854, the Tiffany family had enslaved over 300 Africans for more than a century on the 1,100-acre slave labor camp that they called the Tiffany Plantation. The Tiffanys were the largest rice producer in South Carolina’s Colleton District. While the toil of enslaved Africans earned untold riches for the Tiffanys, the Africans endured violence inflicted to force increased rice production and profits followed by the indignity of the bodies of loved ones being stolen from their graves and delivered to a medical school.
Rich with history and a cast of unforgettable characters, Two Rivers is a sweeping saga of two peoples—European immigrants and African abductees. Together, they experience courtships, infanticide, homicide, rape, rebellions, revenge, sabotage, storms, high-stakes gambling, grave-robbing, counterfeiting, slave mortgage-backed securities, and more.
“De troubles Posey be sees” in Two Rivers reminds one of Southern Gothic storytelling.
Rogers Brings Realism to this Piece of Historical Fiction. I love the author's writing style. He has an extraordinary ability to transport readers to another time and place. His historical research brings the past alive through a historically accurate setting and strong character interactions. While the story's true nature gives readers insights into the past, the emotional human journeys faced by the characters create a compelling and engaging story that is impossible to set aside.
Readers Should Expect to Connect with the Characters. Every character introduced has a story to tell and a part to play in this novel. The author brings the characters together in such an emotional story that readers will be so vested in the outcomes and the realism that they will connect even with the characters they hate. The author doesn't try to hide the realities of the past. He gives readers a realistic, heart-wrenching look at a dark time.
Would I Recommend Two Rivers - De Trouble I Be See by Bob Rogers? I am not always a fan of historical fiction. Mr. Rogers may be changing that for me--and he will definitely be on my to-be-read list of authors! I love his writing style. If you enjoy realistic, historical fiction that brings human elements and characters that find their way into reader's hearts--this novel is one for your reading list. It is not a light read, and the dialect phrasing is a bit difficult to settle into early on in the book. Be patient for a few chapters as you settle into the story. This is a well-written novel with wonderful characters and an eye-opening storyline.
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Check out this novel from the author too...
Category: Adult Fiction (18 +), 516 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: BookLocker
Release date: September 19, 2015
"An ambitious and lush tale set during the Civil War and Reconstruction." -- Kirkus Reviews
"The Gripping saga of Isaac Rice is a hero's journey. [Don't] be surprised if First Dark ends up as a popular movie. It's also a darn good read."
-- Baltimore Post-Examiner
"First Dark is a powerful story of the underbelly of American history that has been carefully researched and written. Characters are well-developed and believable, and the dialogue and description throughout the book are brilliant." -- Reader's Favorite
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First Dark is a coming-of-age story, an epic adventure, and a compelling examination of the primary feelings that drive human nature – hate, hope, desire, love, loss, grief, revenge, and forgiveness – as seen by Apache, black, Mexican, and white young adults during and shortly after America’s Uncivil War.
The San Francisco Review described Bob Rogers as a rising author who takes readers back to life and times in the early years of the Civil War, blending a brilliant mix of historic persons with his fictional characters. Celebrating the sesquicentennial year of the famed Buffalo Soldiers, Bob Rogers delivers his most ambitious work yet–a novel that spans their first generation–from Charleston and Vicksburg to Appomattox and desert Apache battlefields.
First came dark days that beset Isaac Rice's epic journey–America’s wars to settle the "Negro and Indian problems.”
First Dark: A Buffalo Soldier’s Story–Sesquicentennial Edition (with a foreword by General (Ret) Lloyd “Fig” Newton) is an historically correct action novel that follows Isaac Rice, the Tenth Cavalry, and the women who love him. His nineteenth century saga begins in Charleston and contributes to the story of how twenty-first century America came to be. Telling Isaac’s story, Rogers surrounds a host of diverse fictional characters with an impressive nonfiction cast, including historic political, military, religious figures, and entrepreneurs of that era.
Subsequent volumes follow Isaac’s descendants, ordinary nineteenth and twentieth century working people, into and out of calamities–recessions, panics, droughts, world wars, a depression, natural disasters, and the division of people by race, class, and caste. The view through their eyes serves to enhance twenty-first century readers’ understanding of “how things got this way” in America.
Isaac Rice, a teenager on a South Carolina rice plantation, traveling alone, follows a treacherous waterborne route filled with incredible hardships and danger to escape from slavery. Too young to be a soldier, the Union Army hires him to shovel coal on a gunboat. Thus begins Isaac’s westward journey, in which he encounters storms, stampeding buffalo, and the hate of zealous patriots whose causes are antithetical to the nation he is sworn to defend. Undaunted, he pursues respect and dignity on an odyssey from the middle of the Civil War in South Carolina’s Low Country and the Mississippi Heartland, to the Indian Wars on the Great Plains and deserts of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.
Isaac’s is an epic tale of young North Americans coming of age amid the violence of the U.S. Civil War, Indian Wars, Reconstruction, and spillover bloodshed from a Mexican Revolution. Telling Isaac’s story required extensive research of 19th and 20th century books, official documents, and letters, plus multiple visits to relevant geographic locations over a period of twenty years.
A memorable set of characters revolve around Isaac–a Confederate guerilla, a black female activist in a Mississippi Constitutional Convention, a Mescalero Apache warrior, a white Union cavalry sergeant, and a Mexican nurse–who raise their voices and bare their souls as the world they seek constantly changes, bringing tragedy to their lives and danger for Isaac.
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