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    Freeman
    Freeman
    Freeman
    Audiobook15 hours

    Freeman

    Written by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

    Narrated by Sean Crisden

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Freeman, the new novel by Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning of Lee's surrender, Sam-a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army-decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to return to the war-torn South. What compels him on this almost-suicidal course is the desire to find his wife, the mother of his only child, whom he and their son left behind fifteen years earlier on the Mississippi farm to which they all "belonged."At the same time, Sam's wife, Tilda, is being forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner and two of his other slaves from the charred remains of his Mississippi farm into Arkansas, in search of an undefined place that would still respect his entitlements as slaveowner and Confederate officer.The book's third main character, Prudence, is a fearless, headstrong white woman of means who leaves her Boston home for Buford, Mississippi, to start a school for the former bondsmen, and thus honor her father's dying wish.At bottom, Freeman is a love story-sweeping, generous, brutal, compassionate, patient-about the feelings people were determined to honor, despite the enormous constraints of the times. It is this aspect of the book that should ensure it a strong, vocal, core audience of African-American women, who will help propel its likely critical acclaim to a wider audience. At the same time, this book addresses several themes that are still hotly debated today, some one hundred and forty-five years after the official end of the Civil War. Like Cold Mountain, Freeman illuminates the times and places it describes from a fresh perspective, with stunning results. It has the potential to become a classic addition to the literature dealing with this period. Few other novels so powerfully capture the pathos and possibility of the era particularly as it reflects the ordeal of the black slaves grappling with the promise-and the terror-of their new status as free men and women.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 17, 2012
    ISBN9781452679891

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    Reviews for Freeman

    4.5/5

    66 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is a story of perseverance. A story of long suffering. A story of man’s inhumanity to man. And ultimately, a story of love.
    • 5/5
      The Civil War is over. Lincoln is shot and Sam Freeman heads south to find his wife Tilda, who he left 15 years earlier in order to find freedom. He eventually finds her after being shot, losing an arm, meeting and having sex with Prudence and getting shot again after finding Tilda. In the end he dies.Prudence leaves Boston after the war to set up a school for negroes in the south with her "sister" Bonnie. The school is destroyed, Bonnie and 12 others are murdered but Bonnie's ultimate revgenge is to lead the negroes away to a settlement she has established--leaving the town without any negroes to do the work.
    • 5/5
      This was heartwrentching in the best way possible. Pitts is a wonderful writer who draws you into the world of suddenly emancipated slaves in the South immediately after the Civil War and hooks you completely.
    • 5/5
      Such a wonderful thought-provoking book
    • 4/5
      There are very few books that both my wife and I would enjoy equally, and I am convinced this is one of them. This is also one of at least two excellent fictional tales about the black slave experience that I have found sitting otherwise unread on my city library's shelves. What a waste of good literature. The setting for this book is immediately after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination. The war is essentially over (even though President Johnson did not declare the end of the war in all rebel states until August 1866.) We have "former" slaves in the North, "former" slaves in the South, "victorious" abolitionist in the North, and "undefeated" Southerners, all reacting to their new roles, in very dynamic ways. There are too many significant events and some substantial twists that prevent me from commenting more. Readers are drawn in early with highly defined, finely crafted characters, and never left bored. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Interesting story set at the beginning of the Reconstruction Period. Sam leaves Philadelphia to find his slave wife Tilda. Prudence and Bonnie leave Boston to open a school for freed slaves. It was very hard to read of the injustice of Southerners after the slaves were freedUnfortunately, I didn't connect with the characters. They just didn't seem real.I was also irritated by the overuse of Prudence calling Bonnie her sister. I think I got the point the first ten times, lol.
    • 4/5
      Very fine storytelling. Freeman is a gripping tale of the post-civil war south from a point of view too often overlooked - that of the newly freed slaves. Recommended..
    • 4/5
      Too often people assume that when a war ends the trouble stops, the problems are over. That is far from true. It took over a century to begin to fix the Civil Rights problem that was supposedly resolved with the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865! This book is an excellent study on what life was like for the blacks in the years following the Civil War. This book is all about how the Dixie Southerners continued to view the colored. Views did not change overnight. It is also about how the blacks viewed themselves. What is freedom when you have no money and no employment and no place to live? What is freedom when you don’t know where your mother, father, wife and children are or even if they are still alive? What is freedom after rape and murder and repetitive beatings? How do you reach emotional stability after living through such horror? Can you forgive?This book draws a picture that I believe to be accurate and realistic. It cannot be an easy read or a comforting read, but it ends with hope and a promise for the future. Parts were hard for me to read, and that is because the author made me care for the characters. Some were clever, others despicable, but all they all felt real.I appreciated that both sides, the slave owners and the slaves, were portrayed fairly. One was not all wrong and the other all right. Even the most despicable were occasionally, well, at least not all bad!I also liked how the plot unrolled. The author created a fascinating story that you want to understand. You want to know what is going to happen and how the problems will be resolved. At the end you understand everything. There are no loose ends, and I very much like the ending, being both realistic and hopeful too. At first I was uncomfortable with the narration by Sean Crisden, but by the end I loved it. What bothered me at first was when he spoke lines presented in the third person. He stops at the periods and commas, and I felt he was listening to himself with a tone of self-satisfaction. However as you listen further, and as you become aware of each character’s personality, there are more and more dialogs and these are just perfect. He captures the Southern dialect and the Yankee dialect, the whites and the blacks, women and men and children, all equally well. I will close with a quote from the book: “You gotta have hope. To hope is the whole point. Being scared all the time ain’t much different from bein dead.”There are good lines to suck on! I liked this book very much, and I highly recommend the audio format.Completed April 24, 2013
    • 4/5
      Three stories that converge in Mississippi after the Civil War portray the utter hatred and ignorance toward blacks that dominated in varying degrees throughout the country. Underscored is the fact that the Northern victory did not really free former slaves in any real way, despite the best efforts of well-intentioned abolitionists.
    • 5/5
      The love that Sam has for his Tilda is unbearable as well as losing his son to be free. Finally, I can read what it is like after the Civil War, after Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and then was shot, and how the ones who were still contained in the mindset of not accepting freedom like Tilda due to fear and others who are seeking and trying to find what freedom is truly like but can lose their lives for it like Will and Lucinda. Prudence and Bonnie want to set out during this time and start a school for colored people (Blacks) who are now free, to be educated and learn how to fend for themselves. Yet, some Yankees and Whites do not want to see this take place in the deep South. Ben is also searching for a love he once had, his wife and child, after several years. It saddens me how some people were sold, bought, and treated during slavery times even when they were FREE from the enslavement. I shake my head to see how slavery has still lingers in our hearts, minds, and systems even with an African American president in the U.S. Racism still lives today, just a new system: prisons and the imprisonment of our minds. Leonard Pitts, Jr. was able to capture the scenery, dialogue, and narrative voice of which evoked sudden emotions in me and hope someday to see this on the big screen on Lifetime, or theatres.
    • 5/5
      The Civil War is just over. The slaves are free; the South vanquished. Sam, a runaway slave who escaped to the North years ago decides he must return to the South and find his wife, Tilda, whom he left behind. Tilda, sold to a harsh master who refuses to release his slaves, forces them to travel West with him where he doesn't have to follow federal law. Prudence, a wealthy abolitionist from Boston, decides to travel South to open a school to teach the newly freed slaves. Three journeys, unexpected outcomes, against almost insurmountable obstacles.Pitts set his story in the South immediately after the Civil War. The newly freed slaves don't know what it means to be free and the Southerners can't recognize that they lost the war. I haven't read anything that takes place in this specific time period before. This is a compelling read, often difficult due to the cruelty of the times, but almost impossible to put down.