WHICH WAY FREEDOM? by Joyce Hansen (Walker...

WHICH WAY FREEDOM? by Joyce Hansen (Walker & Co.; 720 5th Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10019: $12.95; 120 pp; ages 10-14). This new volume in Walker’s American History Series for Young People focuses on the Civil War and the years from 1861 to 1864. The protagonist is Obi, an escaped slave who joins a black Union regiment just before fighting begins at Ft. Pillow, Tenn. Most of the story is flashbacks to the tobacco farm in South Carolina, from which Obi flees, and his search for his mother. Unfortunately, the most riveting page in this fiction is the foreword.

It seems the author sincerely wants to share his important slice of history, but what could be a powerful telling, just doesn’t come through. Characters are stiff with bulky adjectives, their dialogue so flat that it’s like watching actors read their lines for the first time on an empty stage. The Ft. Pillow massacre must have been horrible, but to find there “was so much noise, smoke and confusion,” is a loose description. Youngsters need specific details to visualize such tragedy. Also, there must be less monotonous ways to draw blacks besides saying Obi has a “smooth, black face,” Thomas has a “rich, brown face,” or the sergeant “scanned the black and brown faces of his men.”

Some of the difficulty here may be the dialect, which seems authentic, but, at times, makes the reader stumble. “She eyes sit deep inside her face like yours,” is how old Buka describes Obi’s mother to him on Page 9. “She cry fierce when the man take you from her to put you on the boat.” Now there is the emotion that could have made this into a real story.