197 pages
Published 2022
Read from April 1 to April 10
Rating: 4 out of 5
A haunting, beautiful, tragic, aching literary novel, New to Liberty introduces us to three women navigating societally forbidden relationships in rural Kansas. Isolation and prejudice loom through each story: mixed-race Sissily traveling through with an older white man in 1966; Nella secretly rendezvousing with a disabled white man in 1947; Greta finding momentary love with a woman in 1933. Each of them are united by the themes of powerlessness in society, of being manipulated by the men in around them, of straining to find any scrap of control over their lives. Threads of old tragedies and past mistakes weave through each of the narratives, tightening them into a cohesive whole.
Bellinger’s prose hums with place and character, bringing dust-blown summers and horrific attacks to life with equal clarity. Her command of characterization is outstanding. The emotional weight of each of the three stories balances delicately between what is said and what isn’t, a boulder poised on the head of a pin. There are no easy answers, no pat fixes, no neat resolutions. Female solidarity — across racial lines, across lines of sexuality, across generations — is the only solid handhold any of the characters are offered:
We could do nothing…. I stood and swayed with her…. It was horrible, but nice. It was like being in church. It was all three of us throwing all hope to something outside of ourselves, hopefully greater than us three. Hopefully benevolent.
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