Isle of Canes

by Elizabeth Shown Mills

Book Overview

Isle of Canes is the epic account of an African-American family in Louisiana that, over four generations and more than 150 years, rose from the chains of slavery to rule the Isle of Canes.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593311753
• ISBN13: 9781593311759
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Ancestry.com
• Length: 585 Pages
• Weight: 2.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Amazingly Awesome

Great book, didn't want to put it down ! I've learned spook much. Thank you Elizabeth Shown Mills !

A compelling and important story

A magnificent work. Mills, America's preeminent genealogist, has evolved into a passionate and successful writer of historical fiction. The Isle of Canes deals with the little told story of the Creoles of Louisiana. Mills shares the story of a family, the Metoyers, people of color, as successive generations live and prosper in the unique environment of Spanish and French Louisiana. We see and feel the changes in their lives as the impact of the Civil War comes to the Isle. The story richly weaves the tensions of slavery, multiracial families, and economic upheaval in the antebellum South. This novel is of enduring importance, and will come to be part of the classic literature describing Southern history. If you enjoy a compelling, and entertaining story, based on real families and events, and if you like to be more than entertained i.e. learn something about our history, you will thoroughly enjoy this novel.

Outstanding Reading!

I highly recommend this book to those who have any interest in genealogy, history or just enjoy reading the saga of a family. Excellent reading. Very enjoyable. Difficult to put down.

Phenomenal characters!

What an incredible story! The four generations in Isle of Canes have touched me in a way I can't forget. Mills has a true gift for creating characters whose skin you can crawl right into and feel their pain and joy.

Held me spellbound......

Isle of Canes has been called a cross between Gone with the Wind and Roots. It's a grand epic to rival both, but it goes far beyond GWTW's moonlight-and-magnolia image of the South and it explores complexities of slave life that Roots' ignored. The sexual tension of Isle is more akin to Monticello's Thomas and Sally than to Tara's Scarlett and Rhett, and the masters who occupy the "big house" were once slaves themselves. Mills explores raw and painful sides of America's past, but she has done it with a grace and style and rhythm and emotion that held me spellbound.

Culture, Race, and Sex

Behind its idyllic façade, Isle of Canes is a frank and gripping look at issues America has preferred not to deal with-particularly the world of slaveownership by those who once were slaves themselves, its motivation (some would say, necessity), and the conflicts of conscience that lifestyle created. A major underlying theme is the world of sexual servitude, which Isle explores in multiple ways, some of which turn stereotypes on its head. Both issues are presented on a stage history has ignored: the cultural conflict of Creole (French and Spanish Catholic) America versus Anglo-Protestant America in the colonial and antebellum South. Mills brilliantly shows the consequences of the white Creole vs. Anglo conflict upon America's racial history.