Review
Set me down in a reading nook with a Bernice L. McFadden book and I'm a happy camper. Ms. McFadden is a master at weaving history with her fictional characters/settings seamlessly, and most importantly accurately. There's obvious research and care put into grounding the tale in reality for the period in history in which the story is set. I'm not an expert historian, but I never felt like Ms. McFadden was using creative license to rewrite history and pull the wool over her readers' eyes.
I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of Easter Venetta Bartlett which traverses through the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. Glorious as a story was 5 stars for me.
Unfortunately, I decided to pick up the audiobook instead of the ebook. As an audiobook, the narration brought it down to 4 stars because I did not enjoy Alfre Woodard's narration of the text. As an actress, I've enjoyed many of Ms. Woodard's television and movie portrayals immensely. As a book narrator, requiring disparate character voices, she at times comes off as a caricature of the characters and text instead of a serious portrayal as I would have liked.
2
