Song Yet Sung, James McBride

I thought I might counter the book group discussion from Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants with my own review of James McBride’s Song Yet Sung. The book is a fictional account of the underground railroad, and McBride, similar to Gruen, did his research. His very inspiration was a visit to the Chesapeake, and more specifically, Harriet Tubman’s birthplace. In many ways his story gives life to realities of a significant time and place, and he expertly allows his reader to connect with this setting. It is truly McBride’s mid nineteenth century Chesapeake that allows his question of freedom, among slaves and freemen, black and white, to flourish.

Rather than inviting his readers into the climate and landscape of Maryland’s shore, McBride forces readers to understand the harsh environmental surroundings. McBride writes that the watermen harvest oysters in every month with the letter R, and, in the other months, they farm. He leaves the reader to act on the information. Certainly his characters create conflict with each other, but McBride allows the landscape to challenge each individual, and in fact the majority of conflict in the story is directly caused by the landscape and climate. The land is jutted imperfectly against the ocean, so that no one truly knows it perfectly. Swamp land rises in and out of firm land and it can never be predicted when and where horses and humans will need to struggle to get through. The ocean itself adds additional complexity to the surroundings and narrative.

This same land and water, where McBride characters survive, is less than 100 miles to the state border and freedom. Though the story explains that freedom at the state line is hardly a reality, with noted slave catchers traveling to the Canadian border to find runaways, McBride highlights this landmark purposefully in character conversations. His characters ask whether this line, made by the men who allow slavery existence, is truly where everyone can be free. Does that border to Canada hold the same freedom? If we do everything we are told, not just from our government or slave holders, but if we behave as Christians, students or mothers or daughters, will our future hold freedom?

Library Journal is correct to attribute flat characters to this story, but the story is not about the characters. It is about the question freedom and land.