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Freeman Walker

af David Allan Cates

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingOmtaler
258913,174 (2.94)7
Freeman Walker is a story told by a mulatto slave, Jimmy Gates, freed by his owner-father when he is 7-years-old, separated from his mother and everything he holds dear. After receiving an unforgettable talk by his father about the rules of life he will no doubt discover on his journeys, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence, he is sent to England to get an education. Jimmy, in the first of the novel's great ironies, has had a blissful, loving childhood and never understood he wasn't free until his new "freedom" enslaves him miserably. Despite his loneliness for home, he learns fast and well and makes himself a good and popular student. Four years pass, and while he is waiting for his father to visit for the first time, he learns that his father's ship has sunk and his father has drowned at sea. Bereft of financial support, mourning still his long lost mother and now his father's death, Jimmy is sent to a London workhouse where he spends six years making saddles, reading heroic novels to his companions, being sexually abused by the proprietor, finding the comfort of prostitutes, and discovering the inspirational speeches of an Irish revolutionary named Cornelius O'Keefe, or O'Keefe of the Sword. When he is 18, dreaming himself a warrior and a hero, he returns to the States to rescue his mother. While looking for his mother in northern Virginia--he discovers that if he wears a hat he can pass for white--he gets caught in a major battle. Jimmy is overjoyed to be able to take part, but is soon overwhelmed by its horror. Untrained, and unattached to any unit, he nevertheless has a chance meeting with O'Keefe of the Sword, who is now a Union General leading a brigade of Irishmen. Jimmy saves O'Keefe on the battlefield, but later is captured himself by Confederate forces, and again made a slave, spending the next two years attached to a confederate regiment digging graves. When his unit is overrun and he is found shackled in a root cellar with his friend, a Yankee officer presents to him a terrible choice, stay locked up, or commit an atrocity and go free. He chooses to walk free. He changes his name to Freeman Walker and as he reinvents himself once again and makes his way into the mythic territory of the Great American West, the novel begins to change. He hopes to live peacefully by getting rich, and he does live peacefully and get rich, for a while. But his race catches up again, and he is lynched, and he loses his treasure, and he surrenders to the mud on the side of the road, and looks forward to the coming winter and his own demise. But into the territory that winter rides the new territorial governor, none other than his childhood hero, Cornelius O'Keefe, who the war has turned into a pacifist. Freeman's life changes once more as he becomes O'Keefe's secretary, and the two of them, joined by a half-breed captain named Felix Belly--three outcasts--form the only government in the Territory, a wild and savage place run by vigilantes. Their quixotic attempt to stop the vigilantes from a campaign of terror against the Natives spurs a terrible but noble adventure and brings Freeman a kind of rebirth in which he finally comes to understand the meaning of moral freedom.… (mere)
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Viser 1-5 af 8 (næste | vis alle)
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
It was a bit of a let down, after a while waiting for it, in anticipation. It was interesting though, to see how a slave boy reacts to freedom, after his father sets him free.
As he grows older and advances through different stages of his life, he changes a bit, to reflect the situation. After a series of coincidences, he also fancies himself to being a faery, or a gifted man, with the ability to make things happen. His transformations were definitely the most interesting bits in the story, however. Other than that, I wasn't as thoroughly impressed with it as I had hoped it would be. ( )
  songbirdz | Feb 6, 2009 |
"When I was a boy I had little interest in freedom, but my father did, so when I was seven years old he freed me, and I was sent across the sea with a change of clothing in a little black maw and a rolled-up copy of the Declaration of Independence that I could not read".

I was hooked by this opening line in David Allan Cate's third novel from Unbridled Books.

Jimmy Gates is sent to England for an education and to escape the racial constraints of the States. However when his father dies, he is sent to the workhouse. He passes some years in the company of thieves and prostitutes. He listens to the speeches of an Irish revolutionary named O'Keefe and dreams of returning to the States as a warrior himself, to find and rescue his mother.

The young Jimmy Gates is an innocent, completely unaware of slavery and what the colour of his skin means to some. He is a gentle, thoughtful boy. As he grows into a young man, his personality changes and he displays a violent, calculating, angry demeanour. At this point I didn't like him very much.

Upon his arrival back in the States, he is surprised to find himself held in such low regard, even though he is a free man. Violence, anger and intolerance is visited upon him. He ends up 'enlisted' in the Civil War, still hoping to find his mother.

He crosses paths with the Irishman O'Keefe again. Their futures seem to be inextricably intertwined. Jimmy Gates renames himself Freeman Walker.

I had expected this novel to be more historical in tone. Although it certainly uses historical events and attitudes, they are simply the vehicle. It is the characters and their dreams, ideas and passions that drive the novel. Freeman Walker is a memorable protagonist, discovering the harsh price paid for freedom.

However, I found my interest waning in the latter part of the novel. An element of magic, faeires and ghost armies is introduced which I felt detracted from what I had already read. I was looking for more about the search for his mother. This is reduced to almost a footnote at the end of a chapter.

The ending is satisfying though.

"Yet out here there was nobody left to see me, nobody left to name me but me." ( )
  Twink | Jan 26, 2009 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
I read Freeman Walker (2008) by David Allan Cates on the tails of completing The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, both of which feature young men in slavery in extraordinary situations, but their tales diverge rapidly from that similarity. The life story narrated by Jimmy Gates, later to rename himself Freeman Walker, tells of a boy born to a slave mother and her master. At 7, Jimmy is freed and sent to school in England. When his father dies, Jimmy finds himself in a workhouse in London. Returning to America in the midst of the Civil War, our protagonist joins a Union brigade, is captured and returned to slavery and is only able to regain freedom by participating in an atrocity.

The rest of the novel is something of a meditation on this sullied freedom as Freeman Walker heads west to the lawless gold rush country. There he finds himself increasingly bizarre situations supporting Irish revolutionary come Civil War colonel come Territorial Governor Cornelius O'Keefe in his efforts to bring civilization and justice to the west. Late in the book, a certain element of magical realism descends upon the book with Walker himself deciding he's a faerie.

It's a compelling, but odd book, which kind of misses the mark for me. It just seems like it should be better than it is. ( )
  Othemts | Dec 1, 2008 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
This novel features an interesting character, a child born to a black slave and her owner. His seemingly idyllic childhood moves to England when his father enrolls him in a private school where he is comfortable and popular with his peers. His only regret is that his father took him precipitously from the plantation without an opportunity to say good-bye to his mother. The segment of his sheltered life in the English school ends when his father dies aboard a ship that sinks en route to visit him. With the loss of his father, the means to support him in school also end and he is subjected to the third and heretofore most dire circumstances of his life. What follows is his return to America and a search for his mother, who had been traded to another slave owner.

The perspective of someone who is half white, half black (and a legally freed slave) at the beginning of the Civil War is the most interesting aspect of this book. He had one green eye and one brown eye, and wearing a hat seemed to guarantee that he could "pass." I never felt fully engaged with the man who changed his birth name to Freeman Walker, but could empathize with his increasingly difficult plight and encounters during the Civil War.

The concept and meaning of freedom are constantly examined in this book, with the first explanation given to the boy by his father when he left for England. What Freeman Walker discovered about freedom during his journeys is worthy of reflection. ( )
  pdebolt | Nov 12, 2008 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
James Gates is a young boy, son of a slave woman and a plantation owner. When he is 7 years old, his father gives him the gift of freedom. After a few short lessons in the ways of life hinging on the fact that life is not fair, his father bundles him off to England for a good education and a chance to live a free life. James spends a handful of years at his privileged boarding school, until unexpected events force him into a more gritty life among the masses. Coming of age in England as a ward of a workhouse, James devises a way to escape England and moves back to the United States, where he desires to find and free his mother. Although he goes into this endeavor with good intentions, he is soon caught up in the excitement of the Civil War and longs to be a soldier putting his freedom and life on the line for the glory and adventure of combat. However, things don't go as planned, and James (who goes through several name changes in the book from James Gates to Jimmy Gates, to Freeman Walker, a name symbolic of his journey) becomes by turns a slave soldier, a miner and prospector, a homeless derelict, and eventually the secretary of a mentally questionable Governor. Through all of his adventures, James questions the meanings and implications of freedom in all it's forms.

Well. I don't really know where to begin with this book. Aside from the fact that it had virtually no plot to speak of, it was also odd in that it wasn't really a character driven novel either. The protagonist was a curiously flat character. This is not to say that he didn't have desires or ideals, or manifest thought processes; it was more that these didn't ring true and felt somewhat hollow. He seemed to change personalities based on the situation he was in and as a result I never felt as though I knew this man, or that I could trust his actions or reactions. Even though he was the star character, it was very hard to get a clear impression of him or what he stood for. His character instead seemed only a to be backdrop on which to hang moral expositions and "messages," although it is not really clear what those messages are meant to be. The gist I got was something about the old adage of freedom not being free, or maybe something about the elusiveness of freedom. It may have even been how the interpretation of freedom is fluid. The problem was that the book had too many of these types of messages, and none of them was very clear. Add to this the author's annoying habit of interpreting his own symbolism, the weird amalgam of strange plot elements, the unsuccessful use of magical realism, and the author's habit of fleshing out the story with minor vulgarity, and you may be able to see why this was not a happy reading experience. The book seemed to take the form of loosely related incidents stretching over a period of time, all involving the same character, which is not the same thing as a story with a definable plot and characters that you can relate to. The conclusion of the novel was also disappointing. It wasn't very believable or convincing and kind of came out of left field. By the time it came around to that point, I wasn't expecting very much, and in that area at least I wasn't disappointed.

Although I was initially excited about reading this story told in a viewpoint that I am not familiar with, I was very disappointed in this book. I think that perhaps if the book attempted to tell a straight forward story instead of making it a plethora of messages and symbolism, I would have enjoyed it much more and perhaps been better able to recommend it to others. As it was, the story started off interestingly, but quickly took a steep nose dive, never to recover. The idea behind this book was a good one, but I think the author failed in the direction and the execution. ( )
  zibilee | Nov 6, 2008 |
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Freeman Walker is a story told by a mulatto slave, Jimmy Gates, freed by his owner-father when he is 7-years-old, separated from his mother and everything he holds dear. After receiving an unforgettable talk by his father about the rules of life he will no doubt discover on his journeys, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence, he is sent to England to get an education. Jimmy, in the first of the novel's great ironies, has had a blissful, loving childhood and never understood he wasn't free until his new "freedom" enslaves him miserably. Despite his loneliness for home, he learns fast and well and makes himself a good and popular student. Four years pass, and while he is waiting for his father to visit for the first time, he learns that his father's ship has sunk and his father has drowned at sea. Bereft of financial support, mourning still his long lost mother and now his father's death, Jimmy is sent to a London workhouse where he spends six years making saddles, reading heroic novels to his companions, being sexually abused by the proprietor, finding the comfort of prostitutes, and discovering the inspirational speeches of an Irish revolutionary named Cornelius O'Keefe, or O'Keefe of the Sword. When he is 18, dreaming himself a warrior and a hero, he returns to the States to rescue his mother. While looking for his mother in northern Virginia--he discovers that if he wears a hat he can pass for white--he gets caught in a major battle. Jimmy is overjoyed to be able to take part, but is soon overwhelmed by its horror. Untrained, and unattached to any unit, he nevertheless has a chance meeting with O'Keefe of the Sword, who is now a Union General leading a brigade of Irishmen. Jimmy saves O'Keefe on the battlefield, but later is captured himself by Confederate forces, and again made a slave, spending the next two years attached to a confederate regiment digging graves. When his unit is overrun and he is found shackled in a root cellar with his friend, a Yankee officer presents to him a terrible choice, stay locked up, or commit an atrocity and go free. He chooses to walk free. He changes his name to Freeman Walker and as he reinvents himself once again and makes his way into the mythic territory of the Great American West, the novel begins to change. He hopes to live peacefully by getting rich, and he does live peacefully and get rich, for a while. But his race catches up again, and he is lynched, and he loses his treasure, and he surrenders to the mud on the side of the road, and looks forward to the coming winter and his own demise. But into the territory that winter rides the new territorial governor, none other than his childhood hero, Cornelius O'Keefe, who the war has turned into a pacifist. Freeman's life changes once more as he becomes O'Keefe's secretary, and the two of them, joined by a half-breed captain named Felix Belly--three outcasts--form the only government in the Territory, a wild and savage place run by vigilantes. Their quixotic attempt to stop the vigilantes from a campaign of terror against the Natives spurs a terrible but noble adventure and brings Freeman a kind of rebirth in which he finally comes to understand the meaning of moral freedom.

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