The Prudent Mariner

by Leslie Walker Williams

Book Overview

In 1913, a young white girl in coastal Georgia fabricates a romance between her elder sister and an African American laborer, inadvertently leading to the man's lynching. A crowd gathers and a photographer records the event on picture postcards. In one of these, the young girl stands smiling beside the hung man.

More than fifty years later, nine-year-old Riddley Cross discovers these postcards amid her late grandfather's belongings. As she...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1572336412
• ISBN13: 9781572336414
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Spellbinding!!!

This book is phenomenal -- not only riveting and mesmerizing, but also, I feel, an important book that will serve for years to come as a testament to the insidious, invisible cloud that still haunts race relations in this country. It's a brilliantly rendered portrait of a 1970's family still grappling with the weight of their ancestors' sins. Williams' ear perfectly captures subtle, inadvertent turns of phrase and gestures that, combined, describe a white culture intimately mingled with and dependent on a black community, and yet utterly and willfully ignorant of the lives lived right alongside them. This book paints a perfect portrait of a variety of unconscious, well-intentioned paternalism and sense of "otherness" that pervades white culture in many parts of the country even today. Besides that, it's just a great story. I have resented every phone call, every appointment, every daily responsibility that has interrupted my reading of this book since the minute I began reading it. I cannot say it more strongly -- this is a fantastic book!!!

This Book is a Treasure

I was so excited about the publication of The Prudent Mariner. Having read several of Williams' short stories, I was confident in her skills as a writer and storyteller. Even my high expectations for this book were exceeded. This is my favorite kind of novel: character-driven historical fiction that uncovers deep truths. Williams' writing is sensual, dropping the reader viscerally into the fullness of the setting. Her characters are so real that at times I completely forgot I was reading a work of fiction. I'd love to know Ridley as an adult... Once I started reading the Prudent Mariner, I was lost to the rest of the world until I finished. I stayed up until the wee hours, carried along on a river of shifting emotions and suspense. What an intense and intensely wonderful book! I am a voracious reader, and this book stands out as one of my favorites of this year. Bravo!

A Novel You Will Rearrange Your Schedule to Accommodate

"The Prudent Mariner" made me beg off of social engagements, forgo breakfast to claim extra time curled up with in the morning, and will myself to read one more chapter in the evening until my eyelids refused to stay open a minute longer. Riddley, our endearing 9-year-old narrator marries pluck with patience and it is through her watchful eyes that Williams reveals in loving detail both the magic and the madness of the South. At times the book lay heavily in my hands under the weight of both a bitter history of racism and the sweltering Georgia humidity that Williams so deftly conjures to life on the page. Ultimately, though, we as readers are as buoyed by the book as Riddley's weightlessness while swimming in coastal saltwater. Williams has written a gem of a novel.