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Expatriate American Hunt ( Joy ) has set her ambitious second novel in Germantown, Pa., where whites still loyal to the Confederate cause, nominally free blacks and formerly slave-owning Quakers live in uneasy interdependence 50 years after the Civil War. Starting off slowly and proceeding with some verbal infelicities, the narrative paints a graphic picture of past horrors and the continuing bleakness of sexual and financial persecution. The plot focuses on Tecnotchy, a young black man plagued by suppressed yet potent memories of his mother's rape and murder 12 years earlier. An inspired gardener and happy protector of wounded animals and people, he has suffered too brutally to respond to a white Englishman's respectful homosexual love, though it offers hope for the future. Unfortunately, Hunt blunts her story's impact by including too many variations on the theme of sexual cruelty and abuse; her characters, black and white, remain caricatures; and even the poignant ending seems a product of the author's rage rather than of narrative inevitability.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A novel about freed slaves and their children living in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1913 is potentially compelling reading. Teenotchy is the timid 19-year-old boy who works as a housecleaner and gardener in the Quaker home where his mother had worked. When Teenotchy was five, he witnessed his mother's rape and murder--a devastating event that has left him incapable of intimacy. When a young aristocratic Englishman, visiting relatives in Germantown, falls in love with Teenotchy, the results are disastrous. There is rich material for a novel in this unusual plot, but stilted writing and awkward phraseology make it difficult for the reader to sympathize with the characters. The most vivid, and painful, scenes are those describing the sexual abuse of Teenotchy's "Aunt Em" (actually his grandmother) at the hands of her white owner when she was young. It's a shame that this strong subject didn't evince a stronger novel.
- Janet Boyarin Blundell, MLS, Brookdale Community Coll., Lincroft, N . J .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.