Let Me Fly

In this solid novel from Waldfogel (Sister of Mine), it’s 1865 and the Civil War has ended, but the battle for freedom is just beginning for the families working their cotton fields outside of Cassville, Ga., a once bustling town that has been burned to ash by General Sherman’s troops. Rachel Mannheim is a recently freed slave, and she wishes she could marry Henry Kaltenbach, the man who had owned her, loves her still, and has given her a daughter. But he’s married to Rachel’s white half-sister, Adelaide Kaltenbach, and Adelaide is bitter but unwilling to divorce—not because of her Jewish religion, but because she can’t bear to “spread our shame all over the South.” She also feels a connection with Rachel, and she’s an advocate of emancipation, even daring to open a school for the local freed black children. She meets Captain Lewis Hart, an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which endeavors to help newly free citizens find a way to survive. Adelaide’s marriage to Henry has been over almost from its start, and Captain Hart’s attention is hard to ignore, but the simmering violence surrounding reconstruction can both crush and ignite romance. This is a probing look at all fashions of passion in the post–Civil War South, particularly the raw hunger for the freedom to love as one will. (Self-published.)