Review: For Love and Liberty, by Alyssa Cole, Kate McMurray, Lena Hart, and Stacey Agdern
by CarrieS
Grade: C-
Title: For Love and Liberty
Author: Cole
Publication Info: Seditious Sisters 2014
ISBN: 978-1-941885-00-0
Genre: Historical: American
For Love and Liberty is an anthology of romance novellas that take place during the American Revolution. It’s notable because of its attention to diverse couples, including an African American couple on opposite sides of the conflict, a gay interracial couple, a Native American woman and a British soldier, and a Sephardic Jewish couple. I loved the attention to diversity, but the writing quality didn’t match the ambitions of the collection. The stories feel incomplete and they rely too much on making a point and not enough on character and plot. Here’s the breakdown:
Be Not Afraid, by Alyssa Cole, is about Elijah, black man who fights for the Colonists because his master has promised to free him after the war, and Kate, a black woman who works for the British Army because the British Army promised freedom to slaves who fought for the British. The strength of this story is that it asks tough questions, but the weakness is that it doesn’t answer them, and it doesn’t provide the reader with any sense that the couple will have a happy ending.
Cole does a great job of presenting the huge dilemma that was faced by Black people in the American Revolution. The British Army offered freedom to slaves who fought on its side, while Washington opposed having soldiers of color in the ranks. Still, thousands of Black soldiers fought on each side. Kate is quite clear on why she fights for the British – it’s a hope of being freed. She’s purely pragmatic, with no allegiance to either side since both sides treat her badly.
Elijah seems primarily motivated by belief in the ideals of the Revolution. He hopes that the values of equality and freedom will be extended to include him. He’s also very loyal, constantly referring to America as his “homeland” and insisting that it is Kate’s as well. She wants to know why she should think of it as her homeland since she was born in Africa and brought to America by force, and this is a question that deserves an answer. I wanted to know not only why Elijah thinks Kate should defend America, but also why Elijah feels so passionately loyal to a country in which he is a slave. Sadly, these questions go unanswered. This is a huge gap in the story, since frankly I kind of wanted Kate to kill everyone with nuclear weapons. I’m supposed to be inspired by Elijah’s patriotism but I was more convinced by Kate’s “lesser evil” approach.
The other problem with the story is that Elijah believes that the Revolution will bring freedom to all men, and we, the reader, know that this will not happen during Elijah’s lifetime. Slavery will remain legal until the Civil War and various kinds of racial injustice remain today. So instead of seeming visionary, Elijah seems naïve, and I didn’t believe that he and Kate would have a happy ever after even if Elijah survives the war and his master keeps his promise. I appreciated being asked to consider tough questions but I was unsatisfied by the lack of resolution. Their ending isn’t described in specific enough terms to give me a picture of what their happy ending will look like, especially since I know that they will continue to face racism after the war.
A Sweet Surrender, by Lena Hart, is about a stereotypical Native American woman who is a healer, and who falls in love with a stereotypical alpha British guy. Perhaps other readers will like the hero’s confidence, but I just wanted to slap him, and I didn’t feel like the story told me anything new about the diverse people who lived during the Revolution. The characters felt like types instead of people, and once again the ending was vague and unsatisfying.
Rebels at Heart, by Kate McMurray was the strongest story in the bunch. There were plenty of problems with it (heavy-handed, too busy making a point about freedom, ended abruptly) but it was the most well-written in terms of language and in terms of character development. It also had the hope of a happy ending that I found plausible because it matched other stories I knew of. It tells the story of two men who are lovers and who are forced by the Revolution to decide whether their relationship is about sex or is actually based on love, and how much they are willing to give up to stay together.
Charles pretends to be a British aristocrat as a way to escape his working class background. Isaac Ward, born a slave, is a free man who works as Charles’ servant. There relationship is outwardly one of master and servant and in the privacy of the bedchamber one of casual lovers. When New York becomes embroiled in Revolution, they have a lot of decisions to make, and they wonder if the ideals of the Revolution will ever extend to them.
The story of Charles and Isaac has a lot of similarities in theme to the story of Elijah and Kate in Be Not Afraid, but I found Rebels at Heart to be more plausible as a romance (I found the trials of Elijah and Kate to be all too plausible). For one thing, Charles and Isaac are motivated by hope, but not by idealism, which I thought seemed more in tune with their characters and their predicament than the idealist patriotism displayed by Elijah. Perhaps if Be Not Afraid had been longer, than Elijah’s motivations would have been more fully explored and I would have been swept away by them, but as it was written he remained a puzzle to me.
Charles, who has some disposable income, comes up with a plan to buy some land and live with Isaac as “two old bachelors living together” I might not have seen this as a plausible happy ending if I hadn’t just read Charity and Sylvia: A Same Sex Marriage in Early America. Charity and Sylvia tells of how in post-Revolutionary America, same-sex couples were more likely to find acceptance in rural communities than in urban ones. They did so by living in what the author of Charity and Sylvia, Rachel Hope Cleves, calls “the open closet”, sort of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” arrangement. Even though this arrangement was not ideal, it did allow same sex couples in some places to live together as recognized couples (although they weren’t openly, explicitly recognized as sexually active). Because I had already read that book, I could picture a life for Charles and Isaac quite clearly in my head. I also liked it that they don’t make this choice lightly.
Both Charles and Isaac question whether Charles could be happy returning to life as a farmer. I found his answer more believable because he had to think about it for a while. I also appreciated that Charles and Isaac have some tough conversations about gender, class, race, and sexuality, and that the nature of their lovemaking changes when they grow closer together as a couple. This story needed to be longer, but it was much more developed than the other stories in the anthology.
Home, by Stacey Adgern, is mostly notable because it involves a community of Sephardic Jews. I didn’t know anything about this community. I love a story that sends me running to Google to learn more. However, this story, while sweet, was also awkward and heavy-handed. It was another example of how a story can suffer when the message takes precedence over character and plot. In this story, engaged couple Abigail and Jacob have to decide how to respond to growing threats to their community. Jacob consders joining the revolution and worries about how this will affect Abigail, while Abigail hatches a plan to speed up her marriage so that she and Jacob can marry in Philadelphia, the place Abigail thinks of as home. Her family is planning to leave town due to fears of emminent violence, and Abigail wants to marry before that exodus happens. The couple has a nice relationship - awkward at first because they are both hatching independent plots, but gentle and affectionate as they start working together.
This book is available from Goodreads | Amazon | BN
Categories: General Bitching, Reviews, Reviews by Author, Authors, A-C, Authors, H-K, Authors, L-P, Reviews by Grade, Grade C
