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FREEDOM VOICES TO PUBLISH BAY AREA AUTHOR'S NOVEL ON SOUTH CAROLINA BLACK LAND BATTLE
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February 1, 2012
Independent San Francisco Bay Area publishers Freedom Voices announced this week the acquisition of publishing rights for “Sugaree Rising,” Bay Area author, journalist, and political columnist J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s first novel.
A publication date has not yet been set, but is expected sometime in late 2012.
Set in the South Carolina coastal area Lowcountry in the late Depression years, “Sugaree Rising” is the story of community resistance to a massive community relocation forced by a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)-style dam building and rural electrification project. The novel also details the struggles of a unique group of Lowcountry African-American people—commonly known as “the Gullah”—to maintain a religion and culture largely based in their ancestral African homeland.
Allen-Taylor’s novel is loosely based upon the Santee Cooper Project, the 1930’s era initiative that carved out two major lakes in the heart of South Carolina, brought electrification to scores of rural communities, but in the process dislocated more than 900 families, most of them African-American.
Freedom Voices editor B. Jesse Clarke calls “Sugaree Rising” “a very solid piece of work. The characterizations and the evocation of place and time are consistent, intelligent and well paced. The weave between spirit and practicality is nearly seamless. Mr. Allen-Taylor certainly had a wide range of publishing choices for such a quality novel. We’re very happy that he has chosen to publish with Freedom Voices.”
Because Allen-Taylor’s novel crosses several established genres, Freedom Voices expects “Sugaree Rising” to have success in the African-American, women’s, historical fiction, literary fiction, and Southern fiction markets. [More...].
FROM AN EARLY REVIEW OF J. DOUGLAS ALLEN-TAYLOR'S NEW NOVEL, "SUGAREE RISING":
“Set in 1935-36, the background drama of the story is drawn from a real event, the building of the Santee River Dam, a New Deal project designed to control floods, provide jobs for the unemployed, and electricity to the rural areas. The novel opens with the Kinlaw family learning that their home and the homes of all their relatives on [Manigault] Hill will be flooded by the proposed construction; the graves of their ancestors covered by lakes to be enjoyed by ‘cracker’ fishermen. Having heard these rumors before, they were doubtful because they could not understand what good electricity would do anyone living underwater, and they furthermore did not think that the white ‘buckra’ would ever flood their own homes, fields, and graveyards. Rather than employ the usual dichotomies of white and black, industrial and agricultural, modern and pre-modern, Allen-Taylor's story takes an interesting twist. Buried deep among the ancillary tales of tricksters, the supernatural, and hoodoo is the unique coming of age story of protagonist Yally Kinlaw who, as she approaches the age of sixteen, is one of the most appealing young literary characters since [‘To Kill A Mockingbird’s’] Scout Finch.”
Reviewer
The University of South Carolina Press
NEW NOVEL TAKEN FROM HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA'S SANTEE COOPER PROJECT RELOCATION
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The late Depression-era exodus and relocation of hundreds of families by the Santee Cooper Project—a long-forgotten piece of South Carolina history—will soon be resurrected in literature.
Former longtime South Carolina resident J. Douglas Allen-Taylor is currently completing negotiations for the publication of his novel, “Sugaree Rising,” a fictional account loosely based on events surrounding the Santee Cooper relocation.
Most South Carolinians and visitors think of Santee Cooper as the popular wildlife and recreation area that covers two man-made lakes, Moultrie and Marion, and stretches through the heart of the state from the Lowcountry into the Midlands. What is not well-known is that when the massive rural electrification and defense transportation project was begun in 1939—including the building of the Pinopolis dam near Moncks Corner—some 900 families were uprooted in the process, forced to disband their communities and relocate families, homes, farms, churches, and even graveyards to surrounding areas. Many, apparently, did not go quietly or willingly, according to newspaper accounts from the time.
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"'Sugaree Rising' is a moving, profound and powerful novel. When I got to the end I felt that I had learned that there are forces in this world that are bigger and deeper than white men's greed, a timely message. Early on it seemed to be a novel about victimization, like all the other stories of eminent domain evictions and land thievery. But by the end, although that was still one of the novel's themes, the book's core somehow became something bigger. I feel the aliveness of older, deeper traditions and connections, and that knowledge somehow gave me hope.
One local writer, journalist and chronicler of Oakland’s political scene and beyond, has written a novel set in South Carolina in the late 1930s. 
"He made his slow way up the aisle to the deep thud of his walking stick and the scrape of his boots and the blowing out of his breath, the steam coming off him like a plowmule, the stormwater running from his hat and coat in long dripping streams, the smell of mildewed tobacco and black bait-earth and wet leaves and mule-rank all about him, step after wobbled step, dragging his broke-up legs with him, holding out his free arm for balance, sometimes reaching forward to grasp the edge of a bench-back when it seemed for sure he might lose his balance and tumble forward. No-one in the Sambuhouse said a word. A hundred wide stares followed his slow progress while he himself was looking not left neither right, but eyes steady down, as if he thought the floorboards themselves were going to reach up and slap him on the forehead if he didn't pay them proper attention."
