Review for "A Kind of Freedom" by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (2017) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
This is a really good book. Set in New Orleans, it’s a family saga that spans three generations and roughly about 70 years, from 1944 to 2011. There are three distinct third person narrators from each generation: Evelyn, the well to do daughter of a Creole family, Jackie, Evelyn’s daughter, and T.C, Jackie’s son.
Evelyn is a middle class girl from a family with high hopes. Her father is one of the first Black doctors to practice in the city of New Orleans. She falls for Renard, a sincere but working class man who her parents strongly disapprove of. Their disapproval continues even as he goes off to fight in WWII. The second story is that of Jackie, Evelyn and Renard’s youngest daughter. The year is 1986 and although Blacks officially now have equal “rights,” low wages and lack of job opportunities is the catalyst that pulls Jackie’s husband, Terry, into crack cocaine addiction. The last story is that of T.C., Jackie’s son. As the story begins, he is being released from county jail for yet another criminal charge. He decides to make money for his upcoming son’s birth by selling home-grown marijuana. He soon discovers that leaving ‘the game,’ however, is a lot harder than he imagined.
There are three story lines in this book, and they switch back and forth. Because this was such a short book (less than 250 pages), there’s only plot and not much else. At the end of the day, I felt like I really didn’t get the depth with the characters I wanted. By the time I was reading one section, the switch was made and the time period and character had changed. Bummer.
This is a good book though, so I won’t go under 4 stars. New Orleans always makes a captivating tale, and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is definitely a writer a watch.
29chapters.com 