Books

Much has been written about slavery. Novels, poems, essays and narratives fill bookshelves, pages anchored in the atrocities of that historical era.

It was the subject of Breena Clarke's best-selling first novel, River, Cross My Heart, published in 1999, and an Oprah Book Club selection. And it is the subject of her second book, Stand the Storm, where she returns to the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Georgetown.

The narrative is focused on Sewing Annie Coats and her son Gabriel. Annie dares to love Gabriel and hold him close, although life on the Maryland plantation has taught her otherwise. Husbands are routinely separated from wives, and children are often torn from their mothers, all at the cruel whim of the master.

Annie teaches Gabriel to knit and to sew while his sister, Ellen, excels at embroidery. The sewing skills spare the family from grueling field work, but they are not protected against the harsh realities of being slaves. At 10, Gabriel is sold to Abraham Pearl, a Georgetown tailor. There, stitch by stitch, Gabriel begins to weave a way to free his family.

While the family reunites, freedom doesn't come easily. The streets of Georgetown prove unsafe for free black people, and the former master hasn't fully relinquished his control. The fast-approaching Civil War threatens to unravel or solidify, depending on the outcome, all that the family has worked so hard to obtain.

None of these obstacles, though, deters the family or erodes its foundation of love and hope. In fact, the Coatses only grow stronger.

There is something vaguely familiar about this tale. We have heard before about the complicated relationships of master and slave, mother and son, and the vile acts that often marked their lives.

But Ms. Clarke's prose is fresh and interesting. The language reflects the era in which the novel is set. And the African-American family's emotional journey tugs and demands attention.

"She'd shorted Ellen in looking out for Gabriel because she reasoned that the man – because he was a man – needed more of her maternal agency," Ms. Clarke writes about Annie. "She had loosed him to come to the city and then she had loosed him to the war and fighting because of the times. She'd had no choice but see him go. He was a man she had made to stand up on his own legs and go and do and he followed that trail."

Despite adversity, the Coatses' make room to wrap others within their fold. They sacrifice, struggle and survive, all the while loving each other. In the end, this is a love story in its purest form.

Karen Thomas is a freelance writer in Arlington.

Breena Clarke

(Little, Brown; $24.99)

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