Tracey Bateman, The Freedom of the Soul

The Freedom of the Soul

Tracey Bateman

Barbour, December 28 2006, $9.97

ISBN: 1597892211

In 1949 Oregon, Shea Penbrook feels all alone as she buries her Granddad; her fianc died during the war in the Pacific, and her dad not long afterward. At the funeral, with her are the preacher she paid and the family helper who asks for his wages. Even before she can get home, her avaricious neighbor Jackson Sable demands she sell the place to him, which she is forced to do by an unfair legal ruling. Going inside her shack, she packs her possessions, but in the attic she finds the diaries of an ancestor who makes her believe she has some African American blood inside her. Lonely she decides to go to Oak Junction, Georgia to find her other roots.

Shea is shocked when she sees how blacks are treated as inhuman, but finds solace in the diaries that focus on the love between Mac, the offspring of a wealthy white slave owner, and Celeste one of their slaves. She wonders who Mac will marry; a white neighbor who condones his having a discrete tryst or the slave who captures his heart, though she sort of knows the answer already. Meanwhile, she meets Chicago based Jonas Riley who does not trust Shea, but has no choice except to invite the enemy into his home and more.

The sequel to THE COLOR OF THE SOUL, THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL, is a fabulous historical thriller that brings to life two eras, the Deep South just after WWII and the Antebellum mid ninetieth century South prior to the Civil War. The prime storyline focuses on Shea's need to belong to someone and somewhere, but also uses the diaries to tell the story of Mac and Celeste. Readers will appreciate this character driven look at racial relationships, while rooting for the best to happen to the deserving Shea.