What do readers think of Remembrance by Rita Woods? Write your own review.

Remembrance by Rita Woods is the story of slavery and four women connected through generations. All four ladies at some point feel hate and anger, and how they deal with these emotions and where this anger leads them is a study in their strength and reliance. Gaelle turns her anger toward something different and perhaps evil. Margot turns her emotions toward something constructive. Winter knows that she is different and when the safety of all that she loves becomes jeopardized, she realizes her real potential. Mother Abigail and her friend Josiah, are the thread holding everyone together through a mixture of spirituality and mysticism. In the end, each woman learns that her strengthens, weaknesses, hate, anger and love all go into making her the woman she becomes and a survivor.

I really enjoyed this book. The story was well written and kept me engaged. The descriptions of location and characters were beautiful. I also appreciated learning more about the experiences of slaves, including the history going back to Haiti in 1700s.
There were some details of each character that I found a little hard to follow at the beginning. I found myself going back to previous chapters to re-read the details.
Overall, I think this is a wonderful book and recommend it others!

I really enjoyed the book and found it well written. The author has that unique gift of describing the location and events where the reader can visually imagine themselves part of the story. While I greatly enjoyed the book, I found the description of the book a little misleading – I was expecting a historical fictional story. I appreciated learning more about life in Haiti and New Orleans in the 1700s during the time of slavery.

This was a really interesting novel, It took a horrible piece of our history (slavery) and built a plot around a place that slaves could go to be free. It was well written, following different characters in different time periods. The characters were vividly described and it was easy to follow which character and time period the book was describing. It was nice to think that a place like Remembrance could have existed to allow slaves some freedom once they escaped from their slavers. It provided a bit of hope. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a combination of history, fiction and character development.

This book took me a while to keep the characters straight and how they relate to each other. I especially liked the characters of Mother Abigail, Winter and the young slaver Dix. Book clubs could have some interesting and lively discussions of the many characters the "gifts" and of Remembrance itself. The some of the scenes are very vivid.

Remembrance by Rita Woods, the historical fiction exposing the human conditions of slavery in America, tells the story of four women. Set over the course of time from 1791 to current day, from Haiti and New Orleans to Cleveland, the characters learn the Art of listening to the spirits of their ancestors. Each one has an ancient spiritual gift that gives value to her life and the destiny of her people. The lives of these characters are woven together like a tight cornrow braid, starting at the roots with Abigail a Haitian slave brought to America. But, can a series of events in the Mystical Sanctuary of Remembrance unravel this inviolable weave?

The strong points of this story are the portrayal of the humanity of enslaved people. A story of hope, faith and redemption. Compared to the works of Toni Morrison, I felt the lack of rhythm in the narrative made the flow, of a very important message, difficult to become fully immersed in.

I am currently reading The Water Dancer by Ta Nehisi Coates, so I would definitely add Remembrance to your list of books with this theme of a world between worlds where magical forces overcome a reality of inhumanity and brutality.

I am a big fan of Historical Fiction and love learning about the past. This book deals with slavery, an uprising in Haiti, the recent earthquake in Haiti, the slave trade, the underground railroad and much more. There are also strong elements of magical realism.

I enjoyed this book, despite some real issues. i found the book very repetitive, and rather choppy. Some scenes took forever - how many times can a character pause, stand alone, faint, etc? It took a full chapter for two characters to agree to pick up and carry another. I felt the threads that were supposed to tie the characters together were quite thin. There were times when I really didn't know what exactly happened (Margot & Josiah) and I really did not like the entire Gaelle storyline. There is a great novel here, and the writing is beautiful, but some tighter editing would have benefited the story.

So here is the deal. I read an excerpt from this novel that was quite lengthy. I really enjoyed the beginning that I read. Then I get the full book as an ARC. I had such a hard time, almost slogging through the middle. Well as I get into the last third of the book, I was flipping pages so fast they were blurring because I could not put it down. This was hard to rate for me, and I went with 3.5 stars.

I usually enjoy historical fiction, perhaps not as far back as this one goes but I was very intrigued with the time in history in which this story takes place. And then the fantasy hit me. So I guess you could call this historical fantasy fiction. The story takes place in three different timelines with four very distinct women across 200 years.

Gaelle is our modern day, struggling, refugee, that is working in a senior center. She forms a relationship with a very old Jane Doe.
In the 1850's we have Margot, who is a house slave on the run with her sister. She loses her sister along the way, and struggles to come to terms with her new position in life.

Abagail is a married slave in late 1700's Haiti and she is sold away from her family to a house in New Orleans. It is there she meets Simone and Josiah who are spiritual beings and help her understand who she really is.

Mother Abagail creates a place called Remembrance and takes in all sorts of lost souls and slaves on the run. One of these souls is Winter, who also has her own special gifts and Abagail raises her as her own. This place is separate and hidden and provides a sense of community and belonging for those that reside there. It is a safe place that cannot be found, until the barriers begin to crumble and the safe world begins to crumble too.

The four women’s lives connect in many ways and challenge our concepts of time and space. The writing is wonderful and creates imagery so vivid and detailed you feel as though you are there. The empathy I felt especially toward the end of the novel is so deep. I felt connected to their world. All the marks of excellent writing.

My frustrations lie with waiting for all these pieces to fall together took longer than I imagined. I was getting frustrated with not understanding how these stories would connect, which is why I felt as though the middle was dragging on and just not getting there for me. I still enjoyed the story on a whole and thought the characters were written well, it was a timing issue for me.

Thank you to the publishers and author for allowing me to read and review. This book will be published on January 21, 2020 by Forge Books.