Nathan Harris’s first novel, The Sweetness of Water, surprised us with a unique and engaging take on America’s postbellum Deep South. Here he explores what might have happened to the freed men and women that travelled south, instead of north, after the Civil War.
Amity is a Wild West epic that takes us from Baton Rouge in 1864 to the Mexican Sierra Madre, with the story of Coleman, a gentle hero, and his older sister June, at its heart. Following the war, the siblings remain in the only home they have known as slaves for a time, unsure where to venture in their freedom. Their master, a vile specimen named Wyatt Harper, is obsessed with June, however, and when he takes her with him to Mexico to seek a new fortune, Coleman soon follows, with Mrs Harper and her daughter Florence in tow.
The savagery and hardship witnessed by the travellers in the borderlands and the unstable environs of Mexico are rendered in detail, and there are some true villains and madmen along the way. But June eventually escapes Harper and settles in the peaceful community of Amity with Isaac, a free man of the Black Seminoles, who became known as the “Mascogos”, a community that reside in Coahuila, Mexico, today.
Amity is the best kind of ripping yarn: at once a love story and an illuminating historical tale. It features two likable main characters, is full of rich, detailed descriptions and an extensive cast of vivid personalities from newly freed African-Americans, Mexican rebels, Juaristas, sociopathic generals, gun and people traffickers, misplaced scholars – to the wonderful William, a Tickanwa-tic tribe guide, who saves Coleman and Florence at several turns. The latter transforms from spoilt southern belle to knife-sharp adventurer. Coleman, a bookish, shy young man, is steeled into a brave champion of the frontier.
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Nathan Harris writes with a rare sort of practical kindness that is quite remarkable. Despite the horrors endured by Coleman and June, they still find hope and eventually happiness in an overwhelmingly brutal world. As former slaves, they are both emotionally damaged, physically wounded people, but their individual fortitude and compassion allow them the possibility of redemption and emergence from trauma.
In Amity, the author creates a tremendous world of power, beauty and possibility, all with a broad, resoundingly Dickensian touch.
