Talmadge Farm

by Leo Daughtry

Overview

It's 1957, and tobacco is king. Wealthy landowner Gordon Talmadge enjoys the lavish lifestyle he inherited but doesn't like getting his hands dirty; he leaves that to the two sharecroppers - one white, one Black - who farm his tobacco but have bigger dreams for their own children. While Gordon takes no interest in the lives of his tenant farmers, a brutal attack between his son and the sharecropper children sets off a chain of events that leaves no one unscathed. Over the span of a decade, Gordon struggles to hold on to his family's legacy as the old order makes way for a New South.

TALMADGE FARM is a sweeping drama that follows three unforgettable families navigating the changing culture of North Carolina at a pivotal moment in history. A love letter to the American South, the novel is a story of resilience, hope, and family - both lost and found.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781970157437
Publisher:	Story Merchant Books
Publication date:	06/01/2024
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d)

Editorial Reviews

04/22/2024

Daughtry debuts with an expansive panorama of the 1950s and ‘60s American South, when tobacco ruled the land and desegregation was in its infancy. Gordon Talmadge, wealthy inheritor of his family’s Talmadge Farm, makes his money off the backs of others—including the two sharecroppers on his land, Will Craddock and Louis Sanders. But tobacco’s star is waning, and Gordon, reluctant to diversify in any way, is entrenched in the past, putting his fortune—and family-owned bank—at risk. When his intoxicated son, Junior, tries to rape Louis’s 15-year-old daughter Ella, it sends shockwaves that change their lives and Talmadge Farm forever.

Daughtry expertly contrasts the experiences of Gordon’s privileged family with that of his sharecroppers, particularly the grim realities that the Sanders endured as a Black family in the midcentury South. Both Will and Louis are up against impossible odds as they try to provide for their families, and when Louis’s son, Jake, is blamed for harming Junior when defending his sister, he’s forced to flee their small town for Philadelphia, desperate to make ends meet so he can study medicine. Meanwhile, Gordon’s tobacco crops can’t keep pace with his spending habits, and he rashly decides to bring on a crew of migrant workers from another state—a choice that results in disaster.

Gordon—and society’s—treatment of the sharecroppers is painful to read, but Daughtry capably evokes harsh historical truths of the era, particularly the generational abuse that wealthy landowners inflicted on the descendents of enslaved peoples. The reverberations of that shake through the Sanders’s family as the story builds to some dark consequences, though some of the most reliable women, Ella and Mary Grace, overcome obstacles as they strive toward happiness. Gordon eventually faces some justice, though he never truly makes amends for his harmful behaviors. Change, of course, comes in the end, but the cost for all involved is steep.

Takeaway: Expansive portrait of mid century landowners and sharecroppers in the American South.

Comparable Titles: Nathan Harris’s The Sweetness of Water, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s The Revisioners.

Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: B+ Marketing copy: A

BookLife Reviews