Summary:
When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family’s property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the past, the present, and herself.
One hundred years earlier, a single violent encounter propels seventeen-year-old Will Tillman into a racial firestorm. In a country rife with violence against blacks and a hometown segregated by Jim Crow, Will must make hard choices on a painful journey towards self discovery and face his inner demons in order to do what’s right the night Tulsa burns.
My take: 5 looksÂ
This is a difficult book to read. It’s violent, racist, and full of hate, anger, and utter destruction. But these are not the reasons it is hard to read. It is hard to read because it’s true. This story is true. The fact that people can so openly hate someone simply because of their skin color continues to be a mystery to me. To think that people are less intelligent, less civilized, less mannered because they look different … well, it’s just ignorant. The fact that this ignorance seems to be a breeding ground for hatred and violence is also a very sorry truth. And to read about a time that it was so widely practiced and accepted … it leaves me without words.
Because I am white. A white woman. A white woman who has never experienced racism or racist remarks. The closest thing I can compare the experience to is to be groped or mocked as a woman. And that is not even close to racism. Not even close to living with the fact that I can’t enter through the front door, drink out of that water fountain, or be served in that restaurant. I’ve never known how it feels to be diminished as a human being in that way.
To bring it to current times, I have never been pulled over by a police officer and felt scared. I have never hesitated to let my three sons play outside, drive alone at night in their nice cars, or engage in normal shenanigans with their buddies out of fear that they may be reported to the police for “suspicious behavior”, “not being from around here”, or worse.
It’s about time that these stories of the past are uncovered, told, and promoted. We all need to read them, be familiar with the horrors of our past, and realize that not everyone experienced “the good ‘ole days”. But they need to be read by white people in particular. We need to be reminded that it’s still hard. It’s still frightening. It’s still difficult. We need to be faced daily with the fact that we all need to acknowledge the issues if we are going to have real change. All humans need to fight for the rights of all humans. We can’t leave the burden of change to only those who are oppressed. Nothing will change until those not affected start to carry the burden with those who are.
And thanks to Jennifer Latham for bringing this story to life. The characters in the story are fictional, but, are they really? The names have been changed, but experiences are all too similar in today’s news. Latham provides a glimpse of the promise, jealousy, hatred, violence, devastation, and lack of support in rebuilding. The few white people who stepped outside the lines to help the people of color existed. As we get glimpses of this past, we should be shaken awake by the parallels to today.
And the sad reality is … Dreamland is still burning.
Highly recommended.
