Muscular, searing ... Josaphat’s assured prose often pauses to linger on exquisite moments of awe that drive Nettie’s internal evolution ... Propulsive.
With soaring language and impeccable historical research, Josaphat captures the rhetoric and hyperbole of the time ... Josaphat’s vivid, bracing novel reveals the collateral damage of violent social change while reminding us that a better, more peaceful world is possible.
The attraction between Nettie and Melvin feels predestined, but Josaphat takes her time. Indeed, it took me a long minute to get used to this novel’s surprising blending of genres ... Part of me worries that in my obsequious effort to avoid being one of those old White gatekeepers whom Kingsolver scorns, I’m brushing aside this novel’s weaknesses — including stylistic infelicities and spores of melodrama that spread through the story’s damper sections. But I always felt engaged.
Unhappily, her cliched prose makes a poor container for the history she reveres. A strong premise set amid the Black Panther Party falters in its execution.
