The Eulogist

A Novel

By: Terry Gamble

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

From the author of The Water Dancers and Good Family, an exquisitely crafted novel, set in Ohio in the decades leading to the Civil War, that illuminates the immigrant experience, the injustice of slavery, and the debts human beings owe to one another, witnessed through the endeavors of one Irish-American family.

Cheated out of their family estate in Northern Ireland after the Napoleonic Wars, the Givens family arrives in America in 1819. But in coming to this new land, they have lost nearly everything. Making their way west, they settle in Cincinnati, a burgeoning town on the banks of the mighty Ohio River whose rise, like the Givenses’ own, will be fashioned by the colliding forces of Jacksonian populism, religious evangelism, industrial capitalism, and the struggle for emancipation.

After losing their mother in childbirth and their father to a riverboat headed for New Orleans, James, Olivia, and Erasmus Givens must fend for themselves. Ambitious James eventually marries into a prosperous family, builds a successful business, and rises in Cincinnati society. Taken by the spirit and wanderlust, Erasmus becomes an itinerant preacher, finding passion and heartbreak as he seeks God. Independent-minded Olivia, seemingly destined for spinsterhood, enters into a surprising partnership and marriage with Silas Orpheus, a local doctor who spurns social mores.

When her husband suddenly dies from an infection, Olivia travels to his family home in Kentucky, where she meets his estranged brother and encounters the horrors of slavery firsthand. After abetting the escape of one slave, Olivia is forced to confront the status of a young woman named Tilly, another slave owned by Olivia’s brother-in-law. When her attempt to help Tilly ends in disaster, Olivia tracks down Erasmus, who has begun smuggling runaways across the river - the borderline between freedom and slavery.

As the years pass, this family of immigrants initially indifferent to slavery will actively work for its end - performing courageous, often dangerous, occasionally foolhardy acts of moral rectitude that will reverberate through their lives for generations to come.

©2019 Terry Gamble (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers

Slavery and the Ohio Valley

Great story about an immigrant families intertwined relationship with those caught up in the early 19th century abolitionist’s movement to varying degrees.

Very slow to start

I feel like this story took a while to gain momentum and while it had great potential, it ended up being just ok. The narration was good and I appreciated the view of the main character as an immigrant, but I never felt like I knew her or what she was feeling. The writing felt sterile and a bit generic and I kept hoping for a little more tension or to feel something more for the protagonist. I also feel like the title is misleading and if you read the description of the book, you already learn everything that this story has to offer.

Cassandra Campbell brought this book alive.

This OK book was slow to get into and took awhile to make it worth continuing. Although the immigrant story was interesting, it was only a small part of this slave and abolition story.