From: Connie Rockman <connie.rock>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 11:45:08 -0400

> I must also concur with Connie on Daughter of Time. That book and
> April Morning by Howard Fast fed my growing love of history and
> historic places. In high school I wrote a paper on the historical
> accuracy of April Morning, which is about the opening of the American
> Revolution.
>
Melody and I are really on the same wave length - I am now reminded that Howard Fast had a huge influence on me as a young adult. It wasn't April Morning, but another of his books - Freedom Road - about the Reconstruction Era, that touched me so much. Having grown up in a family that "kept to our own" I had very little contact with people of other races and cultures as a child. Reading about Gideon and the other freed slaves of that period in Fast's incredibly layered story opened my eyes and heart to a wider world and taught me much more than any history course did about the eventual failure of Reconstruction. The terrible toll of bigotry and prejudice in the post-war South (and by extension, any bigotry or prejudice) was seared in my young mind and changed the way I saw the world. It forever separated me from the way my family (still) thinks, charged my developing political sensibilities, and changed me in fundamental ways.

After moving to Connecticut, many years after reading Howard Fast, I met his son Jonathan, who is a member of the church I attend, and he told me stories of living in fear as a child when his father was blacklisted during the McCarthy years and branded a Communist. To actually meet someone related to the writer who changed my life was an awesome experience. Connie
Received on Wed 24 May 2006 10:45:08 AM CDT