Freshwater Road: A Novel
Denise Nicholas
Apr 2016 · Agate Publishing
5.0star
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433
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About this ebook
“Breathtaking . . . Perhaps the best work of fiction ever done about the civil rights movement” from the award-winning actress and activist (Newsday).
When University of Michigan sophomore Celeste Tyree travels to Mississippi to volunteer her efforts in the Freedom Summer of 1964, she’s assigned to help register voters in the small town of Pineyville, a place best known for a notorious lynching that occurred only a few years earlier. As the long, hot summer unfolds, Celeste befriends several members of the community, but there are also those who are threatened by her and the change that her presence in the South represents. Finding inner strength as she helps lift the veil of oppression and learns valuable lessons about race, social change, and violence, Celeste prepares her adult students for their showdown with the county registrar. All the while, she struggles with loneliness, a worried father in Detroit, and her burgeoning feelings for Ed Jolivette, a young man also in Mississippi for the summer.
By summer’s end, Celeste learns there are no easy answers to the questions that preoccupy her—about violence and nonviolence, about race, identity, and color, and about the strength of love and family bonds. In Freshwater Road, Denise Nicholas has created an unforgettable story that—more than ten years after first appearing in print—continues to be one of the most cherished works of Civil Rights fiction.
“A bold new novel that explores the fault lines of class and race in 1964 Mississippi.” —The Washington Post
“Hypnotic . . . [Nicholas] conjures an insidious mood of fear and writes with lyrical prose.” —Entertainment Weekly
When University of Michigan sophomore Celeste Tyree travels to Mississippi to volunteer her efforts in the Freedom Summer of 1964, she’s assigned to help register voters in the small town of Pineyville, a place best known for a notorious lynching that occurred only a few years earlier. As the long, hot summer unfolds, Celeste befriends several members of the community, but there are also those who are threatened by her and the change that her presence in the South represents. Finding inner strength as she helps lift the veil of oppression and learns valuable lessons about race, social change, and violence, Celeste prepares her adult students for their showdown with the county registrar. All the while, she struggles with loneliness, a worried father in Detroit, and her burgeoning feelings for Ed Jolivette, a young man also in Mississippi for the summer.
By summer’s end, Celeste learns there are no easy answers to the questions that preoccupy her—about violence and nonviolence, about race, identity, and color, and about the strength of love and family bonds. In Freshwater Road, Denise Nicholas has created an unforgettable story that—more than ten years after first appearing in print—continues to be one of the most cherished works of Civil Rights fiction.
“A bold new novel that explores the fault lines of class and race in 1964 Mississippi.” —The Washington Post
“Hypnotic . . . [Nicholas] conjures an insidious mood of fear and writes with lyrical prose.” —Entertainment Weekly
Ratings and reviews
5.0
1 review
Ira Pabst
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May 15, 2021
I just finished reading and feeling Freshwater Road. Through her words, Ms. Nicholas made me feel the fear, the humanity and inhumanity of Freedom Summer. Reading Ms. Nicholas, I could see the people, the shacks, the life of the opressed in Celeste's summer. I have never experienced such a powerfully written story. Thank you Ms. Nicholas
About the author
Denise Nicholas is an actor who starred in the TV series Room 222 and In the Heat of the Night, among many other tv, film, and theatrical productions. Freshwater Road is her first novel.
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