RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksSuch exquisite care is threaded subtly through all Newton’s pages ... Trained as a lawyer, Newton brings meticulous research to bear on uncovering her family members and their lives ... With her scrupulosity, she faces hard facts. With her artistic sensibility, she wraps herself around them. Her sorrow at the slaveholding is great. She, too, is a beneficiary of corrupt mini-empires built on subjugation and suffering. Yet her exploration still glints—with her relatives’ real and hoped-for good qualities, with real or hoped-for moments of grace. Through it all, the gods of her book remain near. Her father and especially her mother. Both have acted in ways that individual readers will have to consider. The painful nature of some of their actions colors this book. But they are drawn with careful detail and given great consideration. On the page, they seem illuminated yet protected ... By the end, Maud Newton’s great openness to and evocations of all the journeys she took turn into Ancestor Trouble’s great beauty, poignancy, and power.
