Glory Over Everything
by Kathleen Grissom
Although this is a sequel to The Kitchen House, if you haven’t read that one, you can still get completely immersed in this story and setting. In fact, you can read this one first and read the prequel later as a companion piece.
Predating the Civil War by thirty years, the protagonist is a wealthy, respectable man in Philadelphia. He’s unmarried but having an affair with a married woman, a girl he used to give art lessons to. When she tells him she’s pregnant, he panics – but not for the reason you’d think. . . As a young boy, he fled the South and escaped a life of slavery; helped by another runaway slave, he started a brand new life and passed as white.
There’s a lot more to the plot than just that, and the obstacles in the hero’s path keep building and building until readers wonder how he’s going to survive one more day, let alone accomplish his goals in the novel. At times graphic and violent, this story is not as disturbing as it could or would be if it were written today. It was published in 2016, and there’s quite a difference in the modern culture of seven years. For me, it was just as visceral and upsetting as it needed to be. Any worse and I probably wouldn’t have finished it or learned the message Kathleen Grissom had intended.
Be sure to check out Hot Toasty Rag's review of The Kitchen House here!
Predating the Civil War by thirty years, the protagonist is a wealthy, respectable man in Philadelphia. He’s unmarried but having an affair with a married woman, a girl he used to give art lessons to. When she tells him she’s pregnant, he panics – but not for the reason you’d think. . . As a young boy, he fled the South and escaped a life of slavery; helped by another runaway slave, he started a brand new life and passed as white.
There’s a lot more to the plot than just that, and the obstacles in the hero’s path keep building and building until readers wonder how he’s going to survive one more day, let alone accomplish his goals in the novel. At times graphic and violent, this story is not as disturbing as it could or would be if it were written today. It was published in 2016, and there’s quite a difference in the modern culture of seven years. For me, it was just as visceral and upsetting as it needed to be. Any worse and I probably wouldn’t have finished it or learned the message Kathleen Grissom had intended.
Be sure to check out Hot Toasty Rag's review of The Kitchen House here!