Imagine you're looking at a family tree. The tree is sketched by hand in walnut ink. It has many branches. Each branch is dotted with a footnote. And each footnote leads to a story detailing the life, dreams and death of an individual on the tree. Imagine this and you've imagined the intimacy and scope of Edward P. Jones' Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Known World, a story about family and slavery set in the pre-Civil War South.
The Known World tells the story of two plantations: one owned by Henry Townshend, a young, black slaveholder, the other by William Robbins, Henry's former master. The two men enjoy a friendly, even paternal relationship while Henry's father Augustus looks on with disapproval. (Augustus, a former slave himself, worked countless hours as a furniture builder to earn money to purchase his and then Henry's freedom from Robbins).
The novel opens with Henry's death and then skips backward and forward in time layering stories upon stories. After Henry dies his plantation falls into disarray under the wobbly leadership of his wife, Caldonia. The plantation serves as the nerve center of the book connecting families and individuals to one another. Caldonia and her mother form a faction, the house slaves another, the field slaves form yet another, and then there's William Robbins and his family, his illegitimate children, his slaves and the dishonest men he's charged with protecting them.
Biblical in scope, The Known World's power lies in the mysterious, unknowable connections that bind its characters together. Each character's story is rich enough to stand alone. Some are tragic. Some are heroic. A few are both. But when so many great stories are woven together the effect of the tapestry is dazzling. For a moment one can almost imagine what feels like to be God.
