The entry begins:
Red Clay is a multigenerational family saga told through the shared memories of Adelaide “Addie” Parker, an elderly white woman when readers meet her, and Eileen Parker, a Black college student still in her teens. Although they share a surname and roots in the same southern Alabama town, the two women have never met until a cold winter day in 1943, when Addie shows up after the funeral of Felix H. Parker, Eileen’s grandfather, and announces: “A lifetime ago, my family owned yours.”Visit Charles B. Fancher's website.
It is the beginning of a conversation in which the story of Felix, an enslaved boy on the plantation owned by Addie’s family when the Civil War ends, unfolds against the backdrop of Reconstruction and eventually the arrival of the Jim Crow era. Neither Addie nor Eileen knows the full story—one of many twists and turns and secrets within secrets—but together they weave a rich tapestry of societal change and racial animus that continues to reverberate through contemporary American life.
Through it all, Felix, an unwitting eight-year-old pawn in a scheme by the plantation owner to save face and fortune—perseveres to achieve success for himself and for his family. By the time he dies, in his late eighties in 1943, Felix has faced hard times and good times and has emerged as a man of substance, tempered by all he has experienced.
Red Clay has many distinctive characters, but the principal ones (with the dream castings in parentheses) are:
--Felix Parker, an enslaved boy who matures into a respected carpenter and Black community leader after Emancipation (as an adult, Michael B. Jordan)
--Plessant Parker, Felix’s father and valet to the Road’s End plantation owner...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Red Clay.
Q&A with Charles B. Fancher.
My Book, The Movie: Red Clay.
--Marshal Zeringue
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