Freshwater Road

Freshwater Road is the story of one young woman’s coming of age via the political and social upheavals of the civil rights movement. Nineteen-year-old Celeste Tyree a leaves Ann Arbor to go to Pineyville, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964 to help found a freedom school and a voter registration project as part of Freedom Summer. As the summer unfolds, she confronts not only the political realities of race and poverty in this tiny town, but also deep truths about her family and herself. As Celeste gets to know her fellow activists and the people of Pineyville, she grapples with her father’s disapproval of her decision to go to Mississippi. A numbers-running bar owner in Detroit, Shuck Tyree is proud of his daughter and proud of the opportunities he’s provided for her, but his pride is outstripped by his fear of the violence she might encounter. Long estranged from her mother, Celeste’s decision to take part in Freedom Summer is partly an effort to face up to her confusions about her own identity. As the summer unfolds, she must find new depths of hope and courage in order to pass through the crucible of hate and fear that little Pineyville becomes for any black people who challenge its status quo, and achieve a new understanding of what it means to be a truly free and independent black woman, Before her long career as a film and TV star, Denise Nicholas worked with the Free Southern Theater in Mississippi in 1964, and in Freshwater Road she reaches back to bring that summer alive in this unforgettable first novel. Freshwater Road is certain to be considered one of the best and most important novels ever written about the civil rights movement in America.