It was a gorgeous day. Beautiful spreading oaks that once defined the dividing line between the Creek and Cherokee Indians now met each other’s limbs over North Peachtree Street, forming a summertime shade tunnel for the travelers. While the horses clip-clopped along on the cobblestone streets of Norcross on their way to Peachtree Corners, Roberta and Amanda sat on pillows on the floorboard of the wagon, waving to everyone they passed. They were wearing pastel yellow and pink sundresses, matching bonnets, and swimsuits underneath. To hold their bonnets in place, they each tied scarves over their hats, securing them with bows tied under their chins. Amanda was sporting her Christmas scarf. It would have been impossible to decide which of the young women was more lovely. But for each person who returned their waves, there was another who frowned at the sight of two women of two races out for a ride together. Roberta frowned at the people who disapproved, throwing them her best, most-disgusted look. But Amanda was stoic.

“I’m used to it, Miss Bobbie,” Mandy said, waving off their rudeness.

“Well, I certainly am not. I want to punch their faces.”

Ellis called from the front. “Want me to stop so you can take them on?” He grinned.

“No!” Roberta said. “But I am simply amazed at some people’s attitudes!”

“Well, I am not amazed,” Amanda said. “Just look at what happened to my mother.”

“What exactly DID happen to her?” Roberta asked quietly, so Ellis could not hear.

“How would I know? She died having me. But I can tell you for certain, it was not good.”

The three travelers rode along in silence for a bit. Wanting to ease the situation, Roberta opened the morning’s Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper.

“Mandy! It says here that my most-favorite professor at the university, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, has a new book coming out, ‘The Souls of Black Folks.’

This reviewer says he writes about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s theory of ‘double consciousness’ as applicable to the Negro perspective, that Black people must have two fields of vision at all times.”

“Well. You don’t say. At least two!” Amanda was becoming more and more capable of sarcasm. “Did you meet him or get to know him?”

“No, he kept to himself. But he is handsome, and he is brilliant. You have to pay attention to every word he says, or you’ll get lost.” She rested the newspaper on her lap before continuing. “It’s such a shame what happened to his little boy. I don’t think he ever got over it.”

“Didn’t he die, or get really sick or something?”

“Yes, he died when he was only two. People said it was diphtheria.”

“Miss Bobbie, if you were a colored woman, you’d understand what he meant about ‘double consciousness.’ You wouldn’t have to buy his book to read about it.”

“How do you know about it?” Bobbie asked.

“I get around.”

“Oh really? Where?”

“I’m getting around with you right now, aren’t I?”

Roberta smiled at Amanda. Her lovely funny sister-friend was full of surprises.

“My dear. I do not have, nor will I ever have, the colored experience or the colored perspective. But surely it cannot be too different from being first, a woman and second, a Catholic in the South. I always have a double consciousness, going through life as I see myself, and going through life as others see me. As less than a man, and less God-loving as a Catholic.”

“My dear Roberta, your score is then what? Two out of three? Take my word for it. You simply do not have any idea what it means to be Black.”

Gabrielle’s hutzpah, talent and fearlessness, her kindness and givingness, make her one of the most amazing people I know. Don’t miss this first novel by one of Kentucky’s incredibly talented women.

—Jane Harrod

I can hardly wait to read this book, tucked in bed in my jammies - a favorite way to wind up most days.

—Sher Schachameyer

When diving into this book, I was instantly immersed into life in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was with great anticipation I turned each page as the story unfolded. This is a masterfully woven tale, a must read.

— Ingemar Johansson

This love story spans pivotal generations in American history as racial tensions mounted, social norms were in flux and the fabric of our nation was challenged. Religion, poetry and music are as central to the story as its enchanting characters.

— Maggie Sprattmoran

What is family legacy? Is it property or cash? Or is it intangible and spiritual?Detailing an era so vividly that one can readily imagine being there, two families create a legacy of social justice cemented by a sometimes challenged but ever steadfast belief in a God of mercy and love.

— Joe T. Gray

To Each the Other Sent -- extremely well written & interesting -- has all the basic common sense yet crazy Catholic themes… also the blatant patriarchy… issues still relevant to all women and Christians. It will raise awareness of the multifaceted but profound effect religious teaching/doctrine impacts people at the pragmatic level. 

This book is filled with romance, riveting tales, & historical realities. Overall, it is reminiscent of “The Sound of Music” in the positive light it shines on family and the Church, combined with historical drama not unlike “Dr. Zhivago,” with many crucial underlying themes having to do with not only non-sequiturs regarding religious doctrine, but also women’s identity and surviving patriarchy. There are many levels of appeal.

This is a massive project with great breadth, historical and cultural insights and implications.

The delicacy & detail in every ‘scene’ in the book stimulate one’s imagination tremendously.  It’s a book that’s able to merge with one’s mind to inwardly and easily experience the totality of the tale.

-Dr. Patrick Moore

‘Sprawling saga’ is a term not sprawling enough to describe the saga of these families from Georgia and Kentucky, who come together at the end of the 19th century to define not only the genealogy of our author of this magnificent story but a tale of what it is that makes these individuals moving from the end of one century into the start of another so quintessentially American. 

With family histories rooted in England, Germany, and Ireland, filtered through a very southern post-Civil War sensibility but with the enthusiasm and joy of what the new century might hold, there is love, poetry, music, painting, Cicero, dancing, cooking, flirting, even a beautiful woman riding an elephant. A duel is agreed upon by two men interested in winning the affection of a young woman, and the weapons are…horseshoes. And there is sex. Oh, the sex!

Kentucky and Georgia are major characters in the story, so of course there are horses, and there is bourbon. More sex here than whisky, I think, but enough bourbon (and Irish whisky and cognac) that I got a buzz just reading these chapters.

But there is also violence, horror, sadness and the constant threat of what will happen to mixed-race lovers or the people who are assisting them. Two men die on the railroad tracks in a heartbreaking encounter where no one is entirely at fault, but their families are forever shattered. Children, a lot of them, do not survive the womb or early childhood, and often their mothers do not survive birthing. Spanish Flu decimates Frankfort and wipes out entire families. Children suffer seizures, there are kidnappings. A governor is assassinated. A man of a different faith dies a victim of despair when the family of the woman he loves rejects his plea to marry her because he is an “infidel.” Many confront the noxious ‘twin towers of tyranny,’ Catholicism and the social strictures of the times.

But, but, but: the evil of racism pervades this book like an entire character we are not able to separate ourselves from. The writing is so strong on this that I would say the author conveys its insidious nature as powerfully as books such as The Known World, Washington Black, or Percival Everett’s recent James.

The writing is exquisite. It is poetic and lyrical and elegant. An early fragment caught my immediate attention: As two young men wake up in a barn being attacked by vicious dogs protecting a moonshiner’s operation, one sees “out of one pocket a vision in flight, a glint of gold in the early light” as he spies a gold cufflink, a gift from his father, come out of his pants as they are ripped apart by the dogs. Now, not only is that sentence a gem standing alone, but it’s beautiful to think that the man would notice this as his hand was being torn open by a dog’s teeth. The book, and the writing, is so perfect that I thought that the only thing that could make that sentence more perfect, in a book so wonderfully American, was if the vision had been ‘a glimmer of gold in the dawn’s early light.’

At the same time, the writing shows so much hilarious understatement that parts are laugh-out-loud funny. In all, the writing displays the same great joy and excitement that drive these characters into our hearts and memories as such grand examples of how proud, loving, graceful, and courageous people created the early stages of American life in the 20thcentury.

I loved these people. Hard working, joyous, happy, horny as hell, attuned to the beautiful sensations of music and written and spoken word, bedeviled by the social plagues of racism and religious intolerance yet striving forever onward toward a more socially just universe, I loved living with these people in this wonderful tribute to a society where I always felt that the bitter tang of life is ever-present, but that better days are always ahead.

-Andrew Solberg