Tennyson Bouguereau is a freed slave in the aftermath of the American Civil War in 1866. He is one of approximately four million people but in the southern states ‘free’ was not exactly the right word. It is not a well-known story how the southern states resisted the federal government, introduced sharecropping where landowners maintained a kind of system of economic slavery and, eventually, introduced the Jim Crow laws which legalised segregation.

Sebastian Barry highlights this period in a dense and well-written novel where Tennyson, allegedly a free man, is driven from a poor living, narrowly escapes being hung and, like many Negro men, joins the army. In between, he has other adventures and not everything that happens is bad!

It’s a fast paced and richly detailed story where Tennyson is often simply responding to events and incidents while trying to stay alive. It’s a part of American history which should not be covered over and it’s easy to see what the 20th-century Civil Rights Movement was up against. It’s a good novel and an excellent read.