Dear TBR,
The Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 reapportioned lands once belonging to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole peoples who had been forcibly removed. The Oklahoma Land Rush that same year was an historical event where what was considered some of the best ‘unassigned’ land in the U.S. was up for grabs by non-Native Americans. Historical record tells us that the race started at ‘high noon’ on April 22, 1889, and that an estimated 50,000 people were lined up at the start, seeking to gain a piece of the available two million acres. Jewell Parker Rhodes uses this foundation to tell an excellent story.
Will and his family are sharecroppers in Texas five years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Though their lives changed when Will’s grandfather and father walked away from the Louisiana plantation where they had been enslaved, the changes haven’t been big enough. Sharecropping meant turning over 70% of their crops to someone else – someone who charged them for the seed they used to grow it, leaving them almost no profit. Will’s father finds sharecropping just as unjust as slavery, so when he hears of the Land Rush, it’s a gamble that he absolutely must take.
Unlike Will, who is a bit undecided about life, Will’s father is a long-range thinker; silent, thoughtful, and determined. He hasn’t been soft, or particularly loving towards Will, so when it is decided that Will, rather than his grandfather, will accompany Will’s father on the cross-country trip, Will is both nervous and exhilarated. Could it be possible that they can soon share the type of closeness that Will’s father and grandfather do? Or will the family mule, Belle, remain Will’s best and only confidant?
Along the trail, Will encounters dust, boring scenery, hot days, flooding rains, and Americans – some for whom the possibility of free land brings out their worst, and others who behave honorably. As in any good Western, there are gunslingers, sheriffs, and saloons. Will’s eyes are opened by his travels, and he learns that there are choices which, once made, will change a person – forever. Considerations of the cost of war, what it means to be a man, and how one’s faith can be a prick to the conscience as well as a guide for life deepen this story from mere adventure to something more. Will changes from a boy who thought he knew the answers into a young man who knows that life holds questions that he hasn’t even thought to ask. A great novel for those who like history, Westerns, and complex tales of growing up, Will’s Race for Home should be on your TBR list this year.
Fresh onto the TBR:
- Gamelit, MCA Hogarth/li>
- Food for Thought, Alton Brown
- The Midwatch Institute for Wayward Girls, Judith Rossell
In the words of Hank Green, “The truth resists simplicity.” Never buy the lie that life, with its astoundingly complex array of beliefs and systems, history and sociology, is anything like simple. Neither the story of the theft of the American West nor the story of the settlement of African Americans within the West is a matter of a simple, monolithic truth – that’s why it’s important to read widely and think deeply. Friends, stay reading!
📚 Still A Constant Reader
