Pale

This is an engaging debut novel set in the summer of 1966 Mississippi. Bernice takes a job with a white family on the advice of her brother. The house is not a happy one, and the “Missus” is a petty, vindictive woman out for revenge on most anyone who looks at her wrong. Secrets, lies and betrayal run rampant within and outside of the house, between men and women who should by all accounts get along with one another. There was a constant tension running through the characters while reading, and I was expecting something very bad to happen. The bad was a series of minor events that became major ones. I have some difficulty describing the story; there were many characters, a lot of racism and winding threads that sometimes made it hard to follow. Nothing horrible happened, it’s more a cautionary tale of who do you trust, and to trust no one. There was so much back-stabbing and treachery it was a little depressing, albeit a fascinating look at human dynamics, and how different people thrown together under similar circumstances react and overreact. I was a bit confused by the timeline and setting; I thought this was a more likely scenario 10 years earlier or more. However, I grew up in GA, not MS. Overall it was an intriguing read, and I look forward to reading more from this author. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Pale reads and feels like Mississippi - it is slow and rich like molasses, viscous as it slowly drips from a wooden spoon. Set in the 1960's, it focuses on life on a rural cotton plantation. Bernice, a young black woman abandoned by her husband, joins her brother working on a Mississippi cotton plantation. She finds herself in a tragic and unhappy milieu, surrounded by nothing but broken dreams, rampant deceit, and vicious vengeance.

Mr. Farmer's story line is secondary to the exploration of his characters' psychologies and motivations. An the author's imagery borders on poetic... you can almost feel the hot, humid stillness of the plantation. You can almost smell the magnolias.

This is a thought-provoking book that portrays a way of life that could easily have been set in the 1860's. The racism and traditional social order portrayed as occurring in the 1960's was surprising to me - that's more a comment on my own naivety, I am sure.

The real star of this book is the prose. Mr. Farmer paints with his words, and he paints slowly. He paints as slowly as one would imagine someone needing to escape Mississippi's sultry midday sweltering by simply sitting and sipping a sweet tea while retiring to the faint coolness of some shade. The subject and the storytelling style fit perfectly together.

A web of secrets and lies bedevil a cotton plantation in South Carolina in the 1960s. Complex relationships among the owner and his wife and their servants create constant underlying tension. Narrated by Bernice, one of the servants, this debut novel does a decent job of tying this all together. The character of the “Missus” was somewhat overdrawn. On the other hand, Fletcher, a tormented biracial character, was very well drawn. 3.5 rounded up to 4.

Pale is a sad story about a web of secrets and lies that torment a cotton plantation in South Carolina in the 1960s.
This is an interesting portrayal of life in the south and the terribly complex relationships between a white plantation owner and his vindictive wife, and their black servants. I like this author’s writing style. The subject and the storytelling style fit perfectly together. I would like to thank Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion of this book.
#Pale #NetGalley

An engrossing story that builds slowly as it pulls you into the middle of a class/ race battle lived in a short period of time in Mississippi. Edward Farmer writes as if he lived the story. He introduces us to a cross section of southern characters just trying to survive in a climate when times were changing very slowly and not always in a good way. As the wife of the owner of a cotton plantation sets in motion a series of events meant to ease her pride and soothe her wounds, the tension builds slowly until the explosion blows apart the expectations of every member of this cast. DO NOT try to read this book a little bit at a time. Once you start, you will not want to stop.

Edward Farmer's engrossing debut, Pale, begins in 1966 in the burning heat of Mississippi, when Bernice, whose husband left with all their savings and didn't return, accepts her brothers invitation to join him in working on a cotton plantation.

She is slowly immersed into a household full of secrets, deception, revenge, and downright cruelty, which revolves around two young brothers who come to work on the plantation. One becomes a pawn to enact revenge, and the other is mistreated, lied to, and trapped by the choices of others.

As the story slowly unfolds, we see that for some, there is a thin line between servant and slave, and how revengeful choices can define and change lives through generations.

People who like novels set in the south, will love the author’s rich descriptions of rural Mississippi, including the cotton fields, jacaranda, cicadas, and pestering summer heat. What a great debut!

This is a quiet book, not a lot of action happens. There is a log of dialogue between the characters, mostly about the ‘Missus’ of the house who routinely suffers from various maladies, she will have seizures on occasion and will become bedridden for days at a time, she’s looked after by Bernice and Silva, another black servant. The story is told from the POV of Bernice who accepts her brother’s invitation to join him at a plantation owned by a white man in rural Mississippi in the latter part of the 1960’s. Bernice and her brother are black and the time period was not a good one for black folk. For the most part the servants remain on the property, very rarely do they venture outside of the plantation boundary. The Missus has a temper, especially when she figures out that her husband had fathered a child while they were married, she takes her revenge on that child. One of questions raised by one of the sons of Bernice, who also works at the plantation, is whether they are slaves. The response was they are a slave to their circumstance, too poor to leave they are trapped doing the jobs they do until they, literally, die. I enjoyed the story and found parts of it eye opening, I recommend it. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This is one of those books that creeps up on you. That the ploy slowly unravels - like a hot Mississippi summer.

Set in post Jim Crow Mississippi, Pale is the story of Jesse and Bernice, two siblings, living and working on a plantation. The house is full of secrets, revenge and unimaginable cruelty.

This is a beautifully written book, with language that could be poetry. It's a powerful LOUD story, told in a soft and gentle voice.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book is so rich in language and imagery. I felt like I was really in the Delta! This book was also a page-turner but I turned each page with dread and trepidation as I worried what would happen to the victims of the life-altering manipulations of the plantation owners. I would recommend this book to adult readers.

“We’re slaves to our circumstances.”

“Do birds remain in winter when that cold threatens their livelihood? Do migrants stay in one place where there is no food left to keep them?”

“No one makes us into anything.” I said sternly. “What we do is our own choice, but it’s a choice that’s laden with scars, Fletcher.” It’s crippled by the things we’ve had done to us and the things they continue to do.”

Pale is the story of two families, one white and one black living on a Southern plantation in the 1960s. Slavery may be over but Bernice and her extended family are as much stuck as any black family ever was as slaves. The Kerns family lords over them and inflicts all sorts of psychological torture and airs of superiority as any white family would over their servants.

The racial inequality drips from every word and action. But each character is tortured by their past, their circumstances and the uncertainty of the future. There are many secrets that keeps these two families intertwined and miserable.

Powerful read that was beautifully written!

This story is an excellent example of how slavery didn't end, but only transitioned to slave wages, as the white plantation owners continued to hold power over "free" blacks. In the mid 60s, In a country rife with racial tension, Bernice takes the advice of her brother to work as a domestic servant at the Kern plantation along with him when she finds herself alone. Secrets seep out slowly from this plantation, and Bernice strives to protect her own. Farmer represents well the horrors domestic servants faced (face?), especially black women at the mercy of white men, and the power that a white woman can wield is enough to damage the lives of those she considers inferior, as we see today in "Karens." I highly recommend this book, as you have to continually tell yourself how far away from legal slavery it was, and yet the horrors remained (remain). Farmer is a powerful writer, who draws the reader into an increasingly frustrating tale. I was fortunate to receive a digital copy from the publisher Blackstone Publishing through NetGalley.

4 "psychologically and culturally complex" stars !!

Thank you to the author, Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for an e-copy. I am providing my honest review. This novel was released May 2020.

I want to start off by saying that I feel that Mr. Farmer has the absolute potential to be one of America's finest writers. This is a debut that although excellent gives hints that the genius and beauty that lay within Mr. Farmer as he further refines and advances his artistry.

1960s rural Mississippi. Ms. Bernie has been abandoned by her beloved husband and goes to work on a plantation to work with her brother. Through Bernie's eyes we watch a complex family tragedy unfold where race, colorism, class and gender intermix in a sophisticated yet cruel fashion to create a dark family saga that holds all players hostage and in a great deal of psychic pain. The writing is lush and descriptive and you can feel the oppression of the summer heat and the desolation and emptiness of the Southern winters. The house is decaying, the characters are both scheming and surviving and underneath it all lays an ugly loyalty, changes in alliances and a darkness in the souls of all that live and work on the cotton plantation that carries forth from generation to generation.

I do not know when I have been as excited in a new writers' potential as I know as excellent as this first novel is that Mr. Farmer has only just begun.