“Don’t love nothing in this life. You only give them power over your mind, as well as your body.”, August 10, 2008
By Luan Gaines “luansos” (Dana Point, CA USA)

Set in 1862, the second year of the Civil War in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Sweetsmoke, a tobacco plantation struggles to meet the demands of the Confederate Army and the rigors of the planting season. A third-generation plantation owner, Hoke Howard is a hard man, but fair he thinks, handling his slaves with authority and brutality when it is warranted. Cassius is a favored slave, a carpenter who suffers the envy of the field hands for his larger cabin and small leniencies afforded him by the owner. Howard and his wife have lost one son to the war, another fighting on the front; Hoke increasingly relies on Cassius, believing the man to be of excellent quality, a sound investment: “We are, after all benevolent… our people are well-served.” Regardless of whatever feelings churn on the inside, Cassius shows nothing to the world, having accepted the limitations of his very existence, freedom but a distant hope and years away. Cautious and enterprising, Cassius keeps to himself in an environment where danger comes from any direction, from the whites, or the petty jealousies of other slaves, their belongings, including pride, meager.

Fuller beautifully describes this nightmarish landscape, characters defined by their circumstances and limitations, Cassius’s life one of nearly unendurable grief. Nursed back to physical and emotional health after the loss of his wife and the uncertain fate of his son, Cassius is profoundly grateful for the ministrations of a local freed black woman, Emoline Justice. A healer/herbalist, Emoline nurses the broken Cassius, teaching him the forbidden- reading- over the long, pain-wracked nights of his recovery. Such small moments of grace keep Cassius from despair. When Emoline is found murdered, it becomes Cassius’s mission in life to track down her killer and exact revenge. Only one other woman has touched his heart besides Emoline, a new slave, bright and beautiful and coveted by other men on the plantation, men with more power and opportunity than Cassius. Armed with a list of names, Cassius eliminates suspects, determined to find Emoline’s murderer, even if his own life is forfeit. Indeed, life is a cheap commodity for such a heart-heavy man, the quality of his days enhanced by small victories and one woman’s proprietary glances.

In Fuller’s stark reckoning, every aspect of Cassius’s world is fraught with danger, a pervasive air of menace that settles over the plantation like a thick fog. War and grief are omnipresent, accepted liabilities for Cassius, his narrow existence threatened at every turn. Thus does this man embark on a harrowing journey for the truth, perhaps more truth than he expects to discover, from the fields of the plantation to the back roads where he pursues his elusive quarry, armed gunmen with their dogs on the scent of runaway slaves, the safety of an active underground railroad and the realization that even supposed friends often harbor venal instincts. In his quest, Cassius removes the shackles from his soul, his commitment to Emoline breeding a determination to succeed. His every move shadowed with suspicion and the threat of violence, Cassius is driven by his passion to set the old woman at peace while finding his own, perhaps imperfect, but precious nonetheless. Luan Gaines/2008.