James McBride wrote "The Color of Water," a powerful memoir of growing up in a biracial family.

McBride's new novel, "Song Yet Sung," begins: "On a grey morning in March 1850, a colored slave named Liz Spocott dreamed of the future."

Liz the Dreamer possesses that rarest of gifts, an ability to see what tomorrow will bring. She has escaped her abusive owner. Now gravely wounded, recaptured, she sees visions of the future as she lies in chains alongside an elderly woman in a slave trader's attic. They converse. Her nameless companion teaches Liz the "Code."

The "Code" was the secret system of messages that guided escaped slaves along the Underground Railroad. The Eastern Shore of Maryland was a favored region for runaway slaves to pass through. As they fled north, they watched and listened for coded signals to help them find their way safely.

A network of "watermen" — oystermen and fishermen along the Chesapeake Bay — ferried escapees to freedom. Slave-hunting patrols played a deadly game of cat and mouse with the runaways and their sympathizers. Many slaves, like those warehoused in that attic, were forced to return to endure the same horrors that they had dared to escape.

McBride got the inspiration for his character Liz the Dreamer from the legendary Harriet Tubman, who showed hundreds of slaves a way to freedom through the swamps and forests of that area. His vicious slave hunter, Patty Cannon, is also based on a woman who actually existed.

"Song Yet Sung" is a war story. This war pits the "Code" against the "Trade." The slave trade was a lucrative business. Slave hunters collected bounties for returning runaway slaves to their owners. Runaways employed the "Code" to circumvent the "Trade."

The novel is also a love story. Liz the Dreamer has a high price on her head. As a number of bounty hunters are searching for her, a slave named Amber helps her. He loves her.

McBride has invented a character named "Woolman." This descendant of slaves lives a wild existence in the forest: "he had the wildest mane of wooly hair that she'd ever seen on any colored, muscles in every part of his upper body, and legs as thick as tree branches."

Woolman brings a muscular, unifying resolution to this fast-paced adventure. While slaves and slave hunters play a deadly game of hide and seek in the swamps, Woolman watches and waits to wage his private war against society.

Racism is the primary color on McBride's literary palette. Sexism and racism merge, forming hybrid shades of oppression. One character observes: "Men, she thought bitterly. They run the world to sin and then wonder why the world wakes up every morning sucking sorrow."

Liz dreams an ominous future in which her people remain enslaved. Clothing fads, violence, bad diets and hip-hop form new shackles in her dark visions.

Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at DaytonDailyNews.com/book nook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 2/18/08; 1:19:44 PM
from the dept.