Acquire Today Blue Sabine: A Novel Written By Gerald Duff Issued As Pamphlet

my review of Blue Sabine, originally published in Southwest Historical Quarterly:

In this beautifully written, wondrously told novel by Gerald Duff, one familys personal history merges with the larger currents of Texas and American history, creating a twisting, turning narrative that is as aesthetically satisfying as it is historically resonant.


Blue Sabine follows several generations of the Holt family, from their arrival to the Sabine borderlands inuntil the present day, The story is told by a succession of voices, most often the women of the Holt clan, The novels structure presents the “testimonies” of these family members at six specific points in time:,,,,,, The ultimate effect is to illuminate the social history of this corner of Texas, from a time when scattered remnants of the Native American population still wandered the forests until today, when you can “feel that bite” of “petroleum and chemicals in the air.
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In, we get a clear look at the complex, nuanced nature of race relations through the eyes of one of the Holt sisters, Maude, who is on her way to assist an African American woman, Joleen, whose husband is being hunted by a lynch mob.
Maude recalls how she met Joleen as a child at a secret spring, where the two shared the water, a simple act of friendship that takes on symbolic importance in a land ruled by Jim Crow.
When Maude told her mother how she loved Joleeen, she was met with a sharp rebuke: “You do not love Joleen, You cannot love a colored girl from the quarters, And you may never say that again, you must never say that again, to me or to anyone else, particularly, ”And yet, the memory of that early bond persists, and now Maude is determined to rescue Joleens husband, though she is armed with nothing more than a horsedrawn wagon loaded down with freshly cut flowers.
Duff handles the scene with incredible delicacy and suspense, signifying him as a major literary talent,

By, Maude is on her deathbed, but the stories continue to weave the family together as her granddaughter is on the scene, We hear about the death of Maudes son, Richard, who survived the Great War in Europe only to die working for a logging company in the Piney Woods, And then theres her brother, Lewis, who at news of the oil boom at Sour Lake “left home so fast he had to carry his goods in a cutdown cotton sack, shouting from the road at me that the next time I saw my brother hed be riding in a shiny automobile belonging to nobody but him.
”Lewis did get his new car, but he also became blinded as a result of an unfortunate encounter at a whorehouse in Beaumont, As this section ends, the family hears the words “Pearl Harbor” spoken on their radio,

Duff makes clear in this book that the Sabine bottomlands is a place where kinship ties run deep, and the power of story is paramount, It is in the telling of tales, the ability to use the right words, that the people of the Holt clanand perhaps all Texanssecure their identity, and their relationships with one another.
As Maude remarks about her sisters attempt to tell a particular story, “she is fitting all that into a pattern to serve her purpose, but I will not correct or contradict what she needs to believe is true in her story.
She must have that as she wants it, and what business of it is mine to deny my sister the shaping of the world which will feed her the nourishment she craves I grant her that.
” By Gerald Duff
moon city press,pgs

Rating:

Gerald Duff has mad skills, Blue Sabine is lyrical, it reads like poetry but in a good way, This is the story of the Holt family as they relocate from Louisiana to Texas after the Civil War and unto the present day, told by

the voices of its women, who have always been the strength of Texas.
Everybody knows that, right

Don't come to Blue Sabine for plot or climax or denouement or any of those usual things, though you'll find plenty of protagonists and antagonists sometimes the same person is both.
Come for the characters and the stories they tell, Each character is a melody joined by the chorus of stories they tell about themselves and each other, Our stories are how we know who we are, the first lessons we learn about family and how to behave or not in the big wide world,

If you are a Texan you will recognize this family because it is yours, It is certainly mine. I have an Aunt Abigail who likes to hold forth as the authority on all things appropriate and inappropriate, I have a Great Grandfather Amos Holt who has turned to God and become a preacher mostly because he is overwhelmed by the women surrounding him and finds God more comprehensible.
I have a Cousin you must capitalize "cousin" Nola Mae whose faith resides in her beauty and style and worth on the manmarket a timehonored tradition among southern women and whose children have sometimes taken a backseat to her personal ambitions.
I would like to note that we don't have anyone who was blinded by a pimp for insulting his hooker, Not that I am aware of, Not yet. Meanwhile, it is my personal ambition to be more like GrandMaude and you'll just have to read Blue Sabine to know what I mean,

For more on the author: sitelink geraldduff. com/

For more on Moon City Press: sitelink com/ Blue Sabine is a story of five generations of women in the same family, told in their voices, along with those of some men of Holt blood.
It is set along the Sabine River, which divides the state of Texas from Louisiana and the Deep South, Fromwhen the Holts first came to Texas to the present, the novel chronicles the emotional lives of grandmothers, mothers, daughters, and nieces, all bound by kinship and history, Each comes to terms with being a woman in the West, in Texas, and in her own way and her own time, In its flow and its setting of boundaries, the Sabine River comes to reflect what remains and what changes in the way the Holt women see their world and themselves.
"The river forever flows, and it pulls at all it touches," one of the characters says, "yet it never leaves, and it never stays, " Two twentyfirst century descendants give the narrative its overall shape and connection: Clement, an awardwinning movie director, and his cousin KayPhuong, a woman of Vietnamese and Holt lineage, who has made herself into a fashion model and actress.
They have returned to the Valley of the Sabine, where the Holts have lived for almost two hundred years, to hear once more the old stories and to confirm their own part in the saga.
They seek to understand and to play their role in the continuing telling and retelling of the narratives that bind them to their family and to the past, .