Stand the Storm

Another winner! Breena Clarke is a fabulous story teller. Her use of the English language is so descriptive it seems I was in the room with the characters. She tells the story of slavery, of buying freedom several times, the Civil War, but mostly the story of a family.

This is an excellent book but not for the squeamish. While I knew slavery was a crime against humanity I did not understand how abominable it was and the damage it did to the African-Americans brought here against their will. Their survival speaks volumnes about their strenght of character. One of the better books on life before and during the civil war. I highly recommend this book.

This book is a wonderful read! I feel everyone should buy a copy and experience the story.

This was a beautifully crafted story. IT relates the story of a mother and her children during a coming of age story during slavery in the American South. Told in an easy going way, it was like the patterns of knitting stitches. Each part meshed into the next. THE pacing was wonderful, clean and clear and in a straight line. Just like the even, humming of the needle through the cloth. You learned to care about each of the characters, FREE or SLAVE, and how historical events impacted their lives.The people in power, and those without power were well described. With the background of the Civil War it touched on many emotions, but never in a maudalin way. This novel was a great read, and the characters truly touched me. I expected to read at the end that this was a real family; the ancestors of the Breena Clarke. Not since ROOTS, has there been such a well done story of the African-American experience during Slavery.

Breena Clarke's Stand the Storm centers on the story of "Sewing Annie" Coats and her son, Gabriel, expert tailors who manage to purchase their freedom at the cost of entering a less than lucrative business arrangement with their former owner. Nonetheless, hard work and thriftiness allow them to purchase Ellen (Annie's equally talented daughter) and her daughter, Delia. Prosperity reigns but the clan is happy for only a short while. The threat of re-enslavement looms at every corner as the reality of the times are made clear with the risk of being illegally captured by "pinchers" and sold South never to be seen again. There was also the ever-changing laws and complicated slave/freeman policies that deceitful slave owners misuse to extort and exploit freemen, not to mention the nerve-wrecking uncertainty of their status living in a district surrounded by slaveholding states as the country enters the Civil War. The history lessons are supplemented with interludes of courtship and conflict featuring some colorful, charismatic and lovable, yet sympathetic characters who serve as love interests and arch nemeses for Annie and Gabriel. Luck and courage are also factors in their adventures propelling the "freedom train." Their industrious and ingenious survival skills are demonstrated during their humiliating encounters with whites and other undesirables. Unsurprisingly, for a story rooted in this era, the ugliness of racism and sexism are a given and Clarke does not skirt the realities of the degrading, violent sexual abuse that women and children of color endured at the hands of slavers, owners, or any white male in a position of authority. However, through Delia, the author broaches the sensitivities of colorism and the complications that it brings to the Coats's household. Told largely from the freedmen's perspective in Washington's Georgetown district, this literary novel will appeal to Historical Fiction buffs in that it evokes the cadence and archaic vocabulary of the antebellum era and elicits the bittersweet nostalgia that comes with it. The author conjures poignant images to transport the reader back to the bustling rat-infested waterfronts, the narrow, muddy thoroughfares lined with trendy businesses and salacious bordellos, and the horrors of blood-soaked, body-littered battlefields. It is these circumstances that prompts a forlorn Annie (depressed when her beloved Gabriel joins the Union Army) to reminisce about her early years enslaved on the plantation and yearns to return to perceived safety, quiet, and comfort of it. The author continues down this conflicted path as she delves into the complicated familial interrelationships of the Coats clan, the ramifications and hardships of a (slave) mother's love, and its ultimate affects on the ties that bind. This title is well researched and recommended for literary, historical fiction fans or those interested in the challenges of African Americans in the antebellum period. Revie

Reviewed by Tracy Kokemuller for Reader Views (7/08) Like her wonderful book "River, Cross My Heart," an Oprah's Book Club selection, Breena Clarke's new novel, "Stand the Storm," is about the struggles of slavery. The story is set in Georgetown. The book's main character, Sewing Annie Coats, is a slave working for the Ridley plantation. Before her, Knitting Annie watched over her and taught her everything she knew about sewing. Her talent for sewing kept Annie from having to work in the fields. After falling in love, Annie had two children, Gabriel and Ellen. Annie taught them everything she knew about sewing and soon they were both adept at the task. At the age of ten, Gabriel was sold to a tailor, Abraham Pearl. Soon Annie begins to work with Gabriel and they continue to sew in order to buy their freedom. Along the way, they meet a runaway slave named Mary and help her. Mary and Gabriel fall in love and they get married. They also begin to help other slaves escape to freedom. But, when they think they have bought their freedom, they discover that Jonathon Ridley has been cheating them and others. They continue to struggle through this oppressive time until freedom becomes a reality. Breena Clarke's writing is like poetry. The images she creates through her expressive and detailed phrasings and word uses make the reader feel the characters' pain and joy. After buying his family's freedom, Gabriel returns to them, and instead of speaking, he begins to sing, and soon they all join him in expressing how they feel at that moment. It is moments like this that make this story so powerful. Breena makes you feel the family's faith and hope. What Mary went through when she was caught for running away will stay with me for some time. I think you will feel the same. Breena Clarke's new novel, "Stand the Storm," is a powerful and heartfelt novel that you should add to your reading list.