Prince Edward

by Dennis McFarland

Book Overview

This is the story of ten year old Benjamin Rome, and his hometown of Farmville, in Virginia. In August 1959 the Supreme Court has ordered the state to desegregate the schools. Ben finds himself facing choices beyond his years.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805068333
• ISBN13: 9780805068337
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Swirling Around in History

Using a page from actual history as his background: Prince Edward, Virginia circa 1959 and the success of segregationists to close the public school system thereby forcing African Americans to seek out education on their own, Dennis McFarland focuses on the fictional Rome family and specifically a young man Ben and the effects of all of this history on he and his family. With warmth and sympathy towards Ben and his basically helpless situation, McFarland imbues Ben, as he also did in the excellent "Singing Boy," with thoughts well above his actual chronological age: " I knew only that I was fated to make stupid mistakes of one kind or another, and at times like this--late at night, alone, sitting on the sidelines, useless and at loose ends in a world everyone else seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing--I would inevitably and repeatedly make the error my father often appeared to be waiting for me to make.": a succinct, in a nutshell explanation of the often frightening state of being the youngest in a family and more to the point of being a kid anywhere, anytime. Ben's family are Chicken farmers and like many kids, embarrassed by much of what their parents say or do, this serves as a source of constant humiliation: "My father loved trotting out the egg as nature's most perfect food, but my brother, my sister and I were humiliated by having to reveal ourselves as chicken farmers. I thought this recurring moment of shame was connected to the abysmal stupidity of the animal who provided our livelihood." Ben is also smart of enough to realize that what his happening around him in regards to the closing of the public schools and the place of African Americans in all of this controversy is fraught with complexity: everyone has their opinion and Ben serves as a vessel into which all this stuff is poured: "I found it immediately appealing, persuasive coming from a Negro man...the idea that slavery not having been as bad as some people would have you believe fit nicely with a general notion I'd often heard expressed, that things used to be better then than now. What it did not fit with, no matter how appealing, were the stories I'd heard Granny Mays tell in the woods, like the one in which the slave girl was beaten practically to death for failing to perfectly groom the white girl's horse." Though at times too didactic for its own good, McFarland is after all telling a real story here and therefore feels protective of the history involved, "Prince Edward" still manages to move and entertain with passages of beautiful writing and gorgeous fat juicy prose

likable, fast-paced, good voice, sharp detail

Price Edward enters into familiar territory with the coming-of-age in the racist South novel, set in this case in Prince Edward county after they have decided to close their public schools and open private ones rather than integrate. Here the narrator is 10-yr-old Benjamin Rome, whose family include (take a breath): a pregnant, married-to-absent-husband-and-not-in-love older sister; a thieving, rakishly charming, on-the-surface-racist-but-somewhat-more-complex-underneath older brother; a distant, harsh segregationist father and more-softly distant sorrowful mother (neither of whom is happy in marriage); and finally, Big Daddy Cary-his grandfather, the sternly crazy or crazily stern patriarch of the family who also happens to be a child molester. Not family but deeply in the mix as well are the Black family who live in the Cary's tenant house: Ben's childhood friend Burghardt who faces the prospect of no school, Burghardt's dad Julian who works for Ben's father, and Burghardt's grandmother, sorrow and dignity personified. McFarland is working within a well-known genre here, which causes some difficulties, a genre which unfortunately for others has a true classic within it (To Kill a Mockingbird). This is not as moving or as deeply felt as Mockingbird, but of course that could be said about 99 percent of the books out there. And Prince Edward has its major differences with Lee's book. In Mockingbird, Scout's family fights the good fight whereas Ben is surrounded by a family who is all over the map: his father and grandfather are segregationists, actively so. His brother seems to be on the surface, but, without giving details, is shown to be a much more complex read than that. His mother seems just out of it, happily oblivious, while his older sister rages in frustration, declaring at one point that their racist actions (or tolerance of such) literally is making her physically sick. On the other side, Burghardt is just coming of an age to understand how raw the feelings of most whites toward him are (one of the more moving scenes is when he finally understands this), Julian is of the "take what you have and don't complain to make things worse" mode, and Granny is a model of dignity and fortitude and intelligence. Within that mix, Benjamin finds it hard to find his moorings, and in fact, one of the nice touches of the novel is that he never fully does, at least not at that age, to the dismay of his older narrating self. The characters are mostly sharply drawn as one would expect from McFarland, descriptions are all vividly detailed with wonderful small touches, and people act as people act, rather than act to serve the purpose of plot or theme. A problem is that working in such a familiar genre means some of the characters are just that, a bit too familiar: the persistently dignified older Black woman, the fawning Black man, the crazy old patriarch, etc. I'm not sure McFarland completely solves this problem. The subplot wit

a fast paced novel

This novel kept me wondering what was going to happen next. Was mean Daddy Cary going to get what was coming to him? Was Lainie going to continue dreaming of getting away? I loved Granny Mays, I loved her talk in the woods.this is an excellent book, partially based on fact.

Step back to 1959 in rural Virginia

I picked this book from the library's new fiction shelf on a whim, and was very pleasantly surprised. McFarland does an excellent job of bringing the reader into the story - I felt like I had stepped back to 1959 and was experiencing the racial tensions of that time.The characterization is strong, although I finished the book wanting to understand more about the father and the grandfather and all the dynamics in this troubled family. In fact, a sequel with these characters would be a treat - McFarland has by no means plumbed their depths.I had never heard of the shameful school system closings that went on in the early '60s, as described here. The author's afterward explaining that those events and the instigators he used in the book were actual people added punch to an already powerful story.

coming to terms with the past:: a footnote to shame

Dennis McFarland's Prince Edward takes us back to a time and place where race pervades almost every move, every sound out of every mouth, every thought. 1959 in Prince Edward County, Virginia is a time when freedom is a word, but a forced choice is what surrounds every abstraction.It is the form of the forced choice that is not a choice (for example the robber's "your money or your life" is not really a choice although it has the form of a choice), which structures the characters' lives--all African-Americans, the boys on the edge of adolescence, women stuck in distressed or not existent marriages. McFarland recreates from fact and imagination a world in which we see souls having to come to terms--having to name--the loss of choice. At the same time, the major characters choose not to name Names, choose to keep knowledge unforgiven, hidden, unsaid, but never undone.Until, literally, now. It is the story of Benjamin Rome. He tells it, lives it, and sees it. He tells us what could never be said in 1959 during massive resistance, during the days of hatred simply based on race. The tale is a footnote of shame; each member of the Rome family burns in some way while the town of Farmville disintegrates (in all senses of the word). And there are all kinds of shame running throughout the book. And all kinds of ways the truth is subverted, glossed over, or left out. This bildungsroman is not so much a tale of a pilgrim's progress as it is an education into the ways society educates its young (and, for the African Americans, the way society chooses not to give them a right to be educated).But I've left the best for last. I've made it seem that the book is a kind of allegory and there's perhaps a bit of that. What is truly great though, are the characters who don't give a damn about the abstract. The beauty of the prose and the details of character make us want to get closer, to sneak a peek at these lives. And reading is a form of spying, and observation is central to this book, the scenes in which we see others seeing several forms of primal scene. We have to think of Lynch's Blue Velvet to understand how many horrors underlie the American Landscape. The more important predecessor to this book is, of course, To Kill A Mockingbird. Lee's masterpiece cannot be outdone but its stark contrasts could stand a bit more humanity. McFarland has done what no one has dared do. He's taken some of the themes of that work and made it more complex, more nuanced, and more real. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in character, story, and the true history of our heritage. I hope schools, especially here in Virginia, will take this book to class. I celebrate the author's courage, talent, and humanity. You will too.