The Serpents Gift
(Click Title to Order)
by Helen Elaine Lee
Pub. Price $21.00    B&N Price: $14.70
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Trade
Format: Hardcover
Publication Date: March 1994

REVIEWS

From BookList:
There are many serpents in Lee's first novel: the scar on Eula Small's forehead; the snake her son LaRue meets during his adolescent summer exploring his extended family's roots in the South; Miss Snake, the chameleon-like character featured in dozens of LaRue's tall tales. Serpents are survivors, and so are the Smalls and the Staples, the intermingled African American families whose twentieth-century experience is Lee's subject here. Through several generations of births and deaths, isolation and intimacy, painful but essential memories, and the liberating joy of nature and of the imagination, the Smalls and Staples share secrets, sorrows, and always, stories, with each family member finding a way to survive. This confident debut novel should appeal to family-saga fans as well as to readers of Morrison, Naylor, and Walker. -Mary Carroll
 
From Publisher's Weekly:
In her impressive debut novel, Lee uses strong, vivid language and fine dialogue to chronicle the lives of members of two Midwestern African American families from the early days of the century to the present. Eula Smalls, her son LaRue and her daughter Vesta move in with Polaris and Ruby Staples, and their daughter Ouida, after Eula's husband dies in an accident. The families merge, with Ruby becoming second mother to the sensitive LaRue, who invents tales that charm the family. Vesta and Ouida become like sisters. Polaris, a kind and loving family man, submerges his pride to keep his job. Later, Ouida takes up with a woman and LaRue becomes a writer of folk stories and oral history. Ruby dies giving birth to Dessie, who grows up to yearn for middle-class life. Often suffering, always strong, the families survive wars, poverty and bigotry. Laced with LaRue's charming tales and a fine historical overview, Lee's novel delivers consistently entertaining characters in an engaging story. (Apr.) -Publisher's Weekly
 
From Library Journal:
After the death of Ontario Smalls, two African American families, the Smalls and the Staples, join to become a single family of contrasts. Their story begins in 1910 and continues to the present, full of layers of history. The characters respond to unfortunate circumstances sifferently. Evla Smalls and her daughter, Vesta, both isolate themselves from possible further pain while LaRue Smalls and Oviba Staples take after Oviba's mother, Ruby, and learn to deal with pain through storytelling and community. In this much-above-average first novel, Lee has portrayed both pain and happiness and woven together incredibly imaginative stories. Born and raised in Detroit and educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, she has a storyteller's sure touch that transcends real life while staying firmly rooted in the African American experience. Parts of the book were published as the short story ``Silences'' in Callaloo in 1990. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.-- Marie F. Jones, Muskingum Coll. Lib., New Concord, Ohio -Library Journal
 
From School Library Journal:
YA-This lyrical first novel strikes a chord that resonates across nearly 10 decades as Lee traces the struggles of two African American families, the Smalls and the Staples. When LaRue Smalls, storytelling son of one of the two matriarchs whose fortunes dominate the narrative, speaks, his folktales create a blues for his people. Equally convincing is the tension that interlocks the families from the early pages of the book through the denouement. The sisterhood of the two mothers-and later of their daughters-provides a coherence that carries readers through the richly varied chapters. Lee's skill with language is extraordinary; she notices so much and records her observations with exquisite precision. Exploring the territory of Southern black novelists who have gone before her, she captures the cadences of the region, creating profound sympathy for the people about whom she writes. Surely readers will look forward to future novels from this talented author. Although the language is straightforward and highly readable, various relationships among characters do require maturity.-Margaret Nolan, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA -School Library Journal