Glory Over Everything Paperback – February 21, 2017

Just all around great Writing and storytelling! Beautiful characters that I fell in love with! I highly recommend this amazing book. I literally couldn't put it down!

It is not necessary to have read The Kitchen House in order to enjoy Glory Over Everything, but it makes for a richer experience. Glory Over Everything is a story of slavery told predominately in 1830, about 30 years before the Civil War. The book tells the escape of Jamie Pyke from his southern Virginia home. Jamie is the product a mulatto mother raped by the white master. After a series of tragedies in The Kitchen House book, 13 year old Jamie escapes and ends up in Philadelphia. Though he is "yellow" and easily passes for white, he lives in fear of being discovered and sold as a slave. Jamie is a talented artist and through a series of fortunate events becomes a wealthy man, who goes by the name of James Burton. Two pivotal things happen to force him to leave Philadelphia, one being the kidnapping and enslavement of Pan, a young Negro boy in his employ. The rest of the novel details Mr. Burton's efforts to rescue Pan and the people who help and hinder him along the way. To give more detail would spoil the book.The story is told by four narrators: Mr. Burton/Jamie, Pan, Sukey (from The Kitchen House), and a white woman named Caroline. It is fast paced (my heart was pounding at times) and hard to put down. It seems well researched and the writing quality is good. I found that I enjoyed the characters more from The Kitchen House and I wish they had more of a role here. However, Mr. Burton is a man with complex problems and is not intended to always be likable. I really appreciated the portrayal of the subtleties of race and the various relationships between whites and Negros. Some see Mr. Burton as white while others see him as 100% Negro. As the story moves along, he struggles with his own identity and the kind of man he wants to be.I am typically down on a tied in a bow happy ending. However, I would say this is more in line with a hopeful ending and a dash of redemption. Some awful things happened to get these people to happy. I also think that though this book has a defined ending, the author leaves plenty of room for another sequel. If so, I will read it!

A novel about the horrors of slavery; an unofficial ‘underground railroad’; bravery and human frailty; the importance of family and friendship; and in the end, playing it forward in some way. Would recommend.

This book kept me on the edge of my seat with what would happen next? I love historical fiction and to have an idea of what it must have been like as a black person in the 1800’s kept my attention. I highly recommend it!

This book was hard to put down but at times I just had to because of the atrocities committed on black people. We are all familiar with cruelty and unfair treatment of blacks in our history but the extent of it portrayed in this story is hard to fathom. I feel certain that many, many, individuals actually lived, suffered, and died under circumstances identical to ones in this book. It is not all gloom and despair though. There are happy times, entertaining characters, and enjoyable moments. A worthwhile read.

Very interesting story. Kept me on my toes waiting to see what happens next. Book put together just right. Glad they all made it home.

Oh, my… Jamie in The Kitchen House becomes an amazing man in Glory over Everything! The life he creates as a white man in the north implodes when he has an affair, impregnating a privileged married daughter whose father finds out about his past from a disgruntled servant. Indebted to a former slave and needing to leave Philadelphia in a hurry, James embarks naively on a dangerous journey south and stumbles on more than he bargained for. A work of fiction, detailing a tragic time in our history, Glory over Everything, gave me hope that even when a country is as divided as ours was then and as ours is now, there are usually more amazing people always willing to do what is right than there are evil people in this world.

What a wonderful yet tragic story of our nations past and it's struggle with deep rooted racial bias. Though this book has a somewhat happy ending it also tells the darker side of the struggle of the people of color in the dark era of slavery which help s us understand how deep rooted the feelings of racial tensions in all parts of our society through the ages.