The Right-Hand Shore by Christopher Tilgman

The novel is set on Maryland's Eastern Shore, more specifically on a farm that's been in Tilghman's family since 1657 where he's been going since he was a child. It's a landscape to which he keeps returning– or perhaps can't escape– with this prequel to his 1996 book, 'Mason's Retreat'.  I didn't realize that there was a personal connection to the house and the property when I read the first book, but it makes sense--the obsession with the land is something that the author and his characters share.  My husband has a much shorter time on American soil, but we have a house that falls into that kind of category--where what would make sense to do is to tear the whole thing down, but that is not what is going to happne because it means more than the sum of it's parts.

The story is set on the eve of the Civil War, and the house's slaves have all been freed, left to manage on their own rather than freed with jobs, homes and skills.  The house is habited by a family that is dysfunctional--the wife shuns her son and takes off to Europe with her daughter, leaving the father to raise and educate the son.  He does so with a brilliant young black boy, and thereby sets in motion a series of potential and real disasters by virtue of his good intentions.  The realtionships between former slaves and their former owners ring true and the book is well written with a story that has some good, some bad, and some ugly parts.  Highly recommended.