Deepwater - Softcover

Jekel, Pamela

4.14

56 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0821748289 ISBN 13: 9780821748282

Publisher: Kensington Pub Corp, 1995

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An early American family is seen through the eyes of its women, including Tess, who pursues dreams in a new world, Della, who triumphantly emerges from the Revolution, and Seleta, who struggles to save her son during the Civil War. Reprint.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

The action is often sluggish and nearly always weightless in this transparently plotted, melodramatic novel about the European conquest of the Carolina coastline, from the author of Bayou (1991), Columbia (1986), and Sea Star (1983). Our story starts in 1587 with the landing of a new British colony on Roanoke Island, just before the birth of Virginia Dare. Then Dare and the rest of the colonists disappear. Next we meet Leah Hancock and her daughters, solemn Tess and charismatic Glory, in a tobacco-raising settlement in 1711. Indian warriors kill Leah's husband and badly wound her, but Leah and the girls escape to a colony of Scottish lumberjacks in Cape Fear. Leah marries the ship captain who brought them there. They all live relatively peacefully until Leah dies of smallpox and the captain fobs Tess and Glory off onto a dashing pirate. Tess marries him, Glory goes to live with them, and the sisters run the household and raise Tess' three children together. Then Glory gets pregnant and dies in childbirth and Tess is left to raise her niece, Della. Della grows up to be a femme fatale and marries Philip Gage, owner of a neighboring plantation called Deepwater. Their marriage is troubled from the start: Philip, who is loyal to the King in the brewing battle for independence from England, is always away for political meetings, while Della and her obsequious slave abet his rebel enemies. Della and Philip take in his daughter by another woman who comes, goes, marries young, and sends her infant daughter, Laurel, to be raised by Della after Philip's death. Laurel inherits Deepwater and marries a Quaker, with whom she helps slaves escape through the underground railroad and raises three children. After the Civil War, newly freed blacks claim part of Deepwater, a school for black children is established, and a schoolteacher arrives from up North. Laurel has an affair with the teacher, but it eventually peters out, as does the rest of the story. The lackluster narrative--a patchwork of animal vignettes and italicized history that the author didn't manage to weave into the story--never quite comes to life. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Relating the story of four generations of an American family living in and around the Cape Fear Valley in North Carolina, Jekel ( Bayou ; Columbia ) gives primary attention to the strong Southern women who have been responsible for maintaining the ties of love among family members. From the birth of Virginia Dare in the first colonial settlement on Roanoke Island to the life of Quaker educator and abolitionist Laurel Chapman during and after the Civil War, this sweeping saga utilizes an impressive amount of well-documented historical material (there's a bibliography) emphasizing the role that the Carolinas have played in American history. Jekel counterpoints such public events as John Culpepper's defiance of the king's Duty Acts a century before the Boston Tea Party with her female characters' private meditations on sex, marriage, infidelity and family. While these emotional, personal perspectives on history sometimes border on the melodramatic, Jekel suggests that many of those situations (children hovering on the edge of mortal illness, for example) were frequent concerns in earlier times. Compelling characters, situations and settings make this Jekel's best book to date.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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