Dreams of Savannah
By Roseanna M. White
Published by Bethany House
Publication Date: January 5th, 2021
Description:
Cordelia Owens can weave a hopeful dream around anything and is well used to winning the hearts of everyone in Savannah with her whimsy. Even when she receives word that her sweetheart has been lost during a raid on a Yankee vessel, she clings to hope and comes up with many a romantic tale of his eventual homecoming to reassure his mother and sister. But Phineas Dunn finds nothing redemptive in the first horrors of war. Struggling for months to make it home alive, he returns to Savannah injured and cynical, and all too sure that he is not the hero Cordelia seems determined to make him. Matters of black and white don't seem so simple anymore to Phin, and despite her best efforts, Delia's smiles can't erase all the complications in his life. And when Fort Pulaski falls and the future wavers, they both must decide where the dreams of a new America will take them, and if they will go together.
Review:
To preface my review, I'll admit that I was born and raised in New York and have spent less than three weeks of my entire life south of the Mason-Dixon line and in anything related to the Civil War have a strong Northern bias. I've also been making concerted efforts in the past year to become more aware of and involved in issues of social justice, so I'm probably extra sensitive currently to anything race-related. I'm also a character-driven reader, so if you don't give me characters I can love, I'm probably not going to like your book. So, with that background, I might not be the author's ideal audience for a book where the main characters are slave owners during the Civil War, but having quite enjoyed all of Roseanna M. White's previous books, I was eagerly awaiting the chance to read Dreams of Savannah.
Unfortunately, I didn't like it at all.
Not only did I not love ANY of the characters, but I struggled to even find someone I LIKED. At the outset of the book, when I didn't really like either Cordelia or Phin, I hoped that they'd enough growth throughout the book that I'd come to like them. They DID grow somewhat (not enough, in my opinion), but it also came really slowly (particularly for Cordelia). While the slow growth and awareness of enslaved people actually BEING human beings. with hopes and dreams and talents beyond forced servitude might be realistic, it was torturous to read. There honestly were times that I felt sick to my stomach as Phin expressed thoughts such as slavery being "a situation his family particularly liked but there was nothing they could do about it" or Cordelia's treatment of Salina (whom she's supposed to care for so much--but whose true well-being she doesn't really consider very often) and things such as (even at the end of the book, when she has supposedly had some growth), asking Luther, a black minister, who has just been reunited with his wife, who had been illegally kidnapped and enslaved, to pray for her father--the same father who forced Salina's mother to be his mistress and is adamantly pro-slavery. Cordelia's first thought, even at the end of the book, is always for HERSELF and her family, not for the people who have been enslaved and oppressed.
And Phin, even though he has experienced some growth as well, at the end of the book still remains more concerned about his sense of honor and defends his cause by telling Luther not to "make the mistake of thinking the Yankees are any fairer toward your people than Southerners are. They might oppose slavery, but they don't consider you equals." Um, I will readily admit that Northerners had a LONG way to go toward treating blacks equally, but to equate Northern treatment with Southern slavery is wrong, and if your way of life includes enslaving others, you need to change it--and it's really difficult to like characters who can't see that.
Secondary characters weren't any better; Cordelia's parents and sister Lacy were awful. Even Salina, who serves as Cordelia's "maid" seems to exist just to support Cordelia--she cares more about Cordelia staying "innocent" and not realizing that they share a father and helping her than about her own well-being. (It was a little easier to read Salina's POV, considering she'd been oppressed her whole life, than Cordelia's ignorance, which came from her being a spoiled little princess, but it was still hard to her sacrificing herself instead of fighting for herself).
So, I reiterate that I didn't like this book at all. Maybe the author's intent was to share a message that she wrote in the author's note at the end: "There were heroes--and villains--on both sides of the conflict. Most of all, there were people. People, as Cordelia discovered, with stories to tell" However, given that many of the people involved in the conflict--and even their descendants today--weren't allowed to share their stories, I found it to be insensitive to racial and social issues in our day. A story about a couple of Southerner white people who sorta-kinda start to see that slavery might be wrong isn't the sort of book that I think the world needs now or that I can recommend to anyone.
I read an ARC provided by the publisher via #NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
