The Heirloom Gardener, by John Forti - I've been following John Forti, the Heirloom Gardener, on Facebook and Instagram for a few years, and I always enjoy his posts, which range from seasonal markers to info on native plants and their significance in American history and society to tips on kitchen and garden craft. I got his book as a requested gift and have slowly been reading it over the past couple of months.
The chapters, A to Z, are short essays and are illustrated with woodcut drawings. A perfect nonfiction read to supplement the various novels I usually am reading simultaneously. I learned a lot and found reading this book to be so relaxing, enriching, and soul-satisfying.
Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan - I learned about the mini-series based on this book from Susan at The Cue Card and was so intrigued by the premise that I decided to read the book before watching the mini-series. Here's the GoodReads blurb:
Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born. When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist.
He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human; and where a boy born in chains can embrace a life of dignity and meaning. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Titch abandons everything to save him.
What follows is their flight along the eastern coast of America, and, finally, to a remote outpost in the Arctic, where Wash, left on his own, must invent another new life, one which will propel him further across the globe.
From the sultry cane fields of the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, Washington Black tells a story of friendship and betrayal, love and redemption, of a world destroyed and made whole again--and asks the question, what is true freedom?
It was an intriguing story, which at times almost felt like science fiction. Wash is a brilliant boy--a self-taught engineer and marine biologist. He carries not only the burden of being a black man in the prejudiced, hostile, dangerous white world of the early 19th century, but he also carries the physical and mental scars of his early enslaved years as well as the guilt of leaving behind those he loved as a boy and who loved and cared for him.
I just read about how the mini-series differs from the book, and while I am usually a purist when it comes to book-to-move adaptations, I think I might like the mini-series even better than the book. The endings are different, so I understand, with the mini-series version more upbeat and hopeful.
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