THROWBACK THURSDAY - CANE RIVER

Throwback Thursday is a bookish meme hosted by Jenny over at Take Me Away. 

It's pretty straight forward, you highlight an oldie but a goodie!

My pick for this week is: 

Cane River by Lalita Tademy

This book was a gift to me a million years ago, and I absolutely LOOOVED it.  It was the first book I had read about the life of slaves, and it really impacted me in a major way.  The parts that were especially haunting were when slave women had their babies taken away and then sold.  Families were torn apart, and probably would never see eachother again.  Here is the blurb from the back cover which can say it better than I ever could.

On a Creole plantation on the banks of Louisiana's Cane River, four generations of astonishing women battle injustice to unite their family and forge success on their own terms.  They are women whose lives begin in slavery, who weather the Civil War, and who grapple with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent early years of the twentieth century.  There is Elisabeth, who bears both a proud legacy and the yoke of bondage.... her youngest daughter, Suzette, who is the first to discover the promis --- and heartbreak of freedom... Suzette's strong-willed daughter Philomene, who uses a determination born of tragedy to reunite her family and gain unheard-of economic independance... and Emily, Philomene's spirited daughter, who fights to secure her children's just due and preserve their dignity and future.

After reading this years ago, I found I was fascinated with this time period and the personal lives of those who were treated like animals, and found another book years later The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, very good as well. You can read my review of it here.  Now I am looking forward to reading Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and it is sure to become a hot one in the book blogging world. 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Jenny at Take Me Away.  It's a time for participants to recognize older books, maybe one you've always wanted to read, or one of your favs from your younger years.

I have never done this meme before, but the book that immediately comes to mind for me is one of my all time favs from my young adult years.  I loved this book so much that it was the first book I ever re-read, and I have since re-read it about a half dozen times.  In fact, I haven't read it in quite a few years so a re-read is in my near future. 

The book is: 

CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR by JEAN M. AUEL

Here's the blurb from Amazon:

When her parents are killed by an earthquake, 5-year-old Ayla wanders through the forest completely alone. Cold, hungry, and badly injured by a cave lion, the little girl is as good as gone until she is discovered by a group who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. This clan, left homeless by the same disaster, have little interest in the helpless girl who comes from the tribe they refer to as the "Others." Only their medicine woman sees in Ayla a fellow human, worthy of care. She painstakingly nurses her back to health--a decision that will forever alter the physical and emotional structure of the clan. Although this story takes place roughly 35,000 years ago, its cast of characters could easily slide into any modern tale. The members of the Neanderthal clan, ruled by traditions and taboos, find themselves challenged by this outsider, who represents the physically modern Cro-Magnons. And as Ayla begins to grow and mature, her natural tendencies emerge, putting her in the middle of a brutal and dangerous power struggle.

What I love about this book is simple, the supurb storytelling.  Jean Auel takes the reader back in time with such authenticity you feel like she actually lived there.  I am a sucker for a female heroine that is a healer and uses herbal medicine to treat people.  Which is probably why I love the Outlander books so much.  This is something I have an intense interest in in my own life, and I long for the old days when life was less about technology than about the hard physical labour and relying on eachother to survive.  This was my favourite of the series, as the other books, to me, did not live up to the perfection of the first one. 

And on a completely non-meme note, I just HAD to share, because I can HARDLY EVEN BELIEVE it, but my review for 360 Degrees Longitude is going to be PUBLISHED IN THE NEXT PRINTING OF THE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am beyond words and stupified with gratitude for John Higham asking me if it would be "okay" to put my review in the 3rd printing of his book.  Um... YEAH!!!!!!!!!    Honestly?  This is something I never dreamed could happen to me, and his book is one I so passionately believe in and really think everyone should read it as it is a FANTASTIC debut memoir. 

I am going to now continue my day atop cloud nine and hope you and yours have a wonderful one as well!!!