Stephen Wright The Amalgamation Polka

The Amalgamation Polka

Stephen Wright

Knopf, Feb 2006, $24.95, 304 pp.

ISBN 067945117X

To their chagrin, Carolina slaveholders Asa and Ida Maury cannot understand how their daughter Roxana rejects the institution that puts food on her plate. In fact Roxana finds treating people as slaves an abomination while growing up at Redemption Hall. Upsetting her parents even more so, Roxana marries Thatcher Fish of a prominent upstate New York family, who are abolitionist activists.

In 1844, Roxana gives birth to a son, named Liberty for obvious reasons. He grows up in a household that strongly believes in freedom for everyone, regardless of race, religion, national origin or gender. When the Civil War begins, Liberty enlists, dreaming of freeing the abused slaves. However, he finds war horrific not glorious, but soon ends up visiting his matriarchal home where he meets his ailing grandma and a deranged Asa, who performs appalling experimentation that lead to death on his slaves. As the Northern army closes in on the Redemption Hall area, Asa, leaving behind Ida, flees, taking Liberty with him on a vessel running the blockade for Nassau.

The Roxana and Liberty subplots, aided by another involving Uncle Potter in Kansas, tie together to forge a satirical look at the grotesqueness of the human condition. The storyline is filled with action, but is more a purposely exaggerated period piece that inanely accentuates the worse. Readers who appreciate tons of irony will enjoy this solid sordid hyperbole, that applies inductive reasoning to make a timely case of freedom for all when the Patriot Act and zealous fundamentalists want to homogenize the First Amendment.