A Reckoning - Hardcover

"Spalding's timely, historically sensitive sequel to The Purchase (2013), a literary saga which also confidently stands alone, explores the ramifications of slavery on the next generation of the Dickinson family. An abolitionist's arrival on their southwestern Virginia farm in 1855 sparks the dissolution of their longtime way of life. Some enslaved men escape. Without their labor, the crops fail and money grows tight, fomenting conflict between circuit-riding preacher John and his cruel half-brother, Benjamin, who owns their land and slaves. The narrative then turns adventurous as it follows several people, including John's wife, Lavina, 13-year-old son, Martin, and an escaped slave, Bry, as their journeys away from Jonesville unite and diverge. The characters are full-fledged individuals whose mind-sets reflect their time and place. John is enamored of their African American housekeeper and imagines she loves him in return, while Lavina is an intriguing mix of independence and feminine conformity. For John's family, it's also noteworthy that the unspoiled American landscape, spectacularly described in its glory and dangers, offers a spirituality and freedom absent from his controlling form of religion." --Sarah Johnson, Booklist

"Spalding's excellent fifth novel is a drama set in the late 1850's as conflicts over slavery and abolition tear apart a Virginia plantation family . . . The family trek west is fraught with peril, hardship, disappointment, and injury, while slave catchers pursue runaways north. . . . Rife with historical detail." --Publishers Weekly

"An engrossing, deftly crafted narrative . . . A Virginia family suffers poverty and sorrow as slavery tears their world apart . . . As the characters struggle to survive, they discover that redemption is elusive and forgiveness, hard-won."
--Kirkus Reviews

"What a brilliant and harrowing book! Everyone thinks they know the epic story of early nineteenth-century America, of the covered wagons and the way west; A Reckoning will persuade you that you don't. For one thing, it is the story of families--for another, it was written over the politics of slavery. Riverboats, rutted forest roads, slave catchers, con men, sick mules, broken axles, lost children. There is something of Mark Twain in this telling and something of Willa Cather, a narrative as ingenious in its mix of points of view as Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and full of enough to keep anyone turning pages. And at the heart of it is the portrait of a remarkably strong woman and a painfully rich portrait of a marriage and a family."
--Robert Hass

"A dark and mythopoetic novel . . . that stands apart for its texture, moral nuance, and the somber earthy prose."
--The Globe and Mail

"A beautiful and brilliant work of art, vulnerable, driven, and unsettling. A humane and timely examination of how the societies we create--just or profoundly unjust--set the parameters for the people we become. Extraordinary."
--Madeleine Thien

LINDA SPALDING was born in Kansas and lived in Mexico and Hawaii before immigrating to Canada in 1982. She is the author of four critically acclaimed novels, The Purchase (awarded Canada's Governor General's Literary Award), Daughters of Captain Cook, The Paper Wife, and (with her daughter Esta) Mere. Her nonfiction includes A Dark Place in the Jungle, Riska: Memories of a Dayak Girlhood, and Who Named the Knife. In 2003 Spalding received the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the Canadian literary community. She lives in Toronto, where she is an editor at Brick magazine.