Homeward: A Novel

When she initially comes home pregnant with a baby that is not her husbands, her mother tells her, “This is your bed, Rose. You are going to have to lay in it all by yourself…That’s all we want, Rose. Fairness.” But though she may be delicate, Rose is not fragile. “Alone in our fear, we cannot do anything. But with our family and God on our side, we are stronger than an army of ten thousand.” After reconciling with her husband, Rose wrestles with his departure for the Vietnam War, but “as long as there were men in power, there would always be a need for soldiers. If women were presidents and leaders, we would never send our sons, husbands, uncles, and brothers off to war…Until we were all free to choose, none of us were free.” She discovers that fighting for freedom “could be both loud and quiet. We all didn’t have to be on the front lines…Leave us alone and allow us the freedom to live. That was my solemn prayer.” “When it was all said and done, racism didn’t care what your religion was…When that policeman attacked me the way he did, he didn’t care what God I served or if I served any God at all. He looked at me and saw nothing–but especially not a child of God.” Dr. King patterned the Civil Rights Movement after Mohandas K. Gandhi, a Hindu teacher and activist. “So many of the SNCC members were Jewish and look at all the good work they had been doing. It was strange how all these bad things were bringing together so many people from so many different communities. Maybe this was God’s plan after all.” Angela Jackson-Brown’s Homeward “commemorates the 60th anniversary of so many historical events like the assassination of Medgar Evers; the March on Washington; the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killing for a little girls (Addie May Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson); and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” A must read!