Lost Seeds

This novel is my introduction to Teresa Mosley Sebastian and this work, Lost Seeds: The Beginning, is seemingly the first of a multi-generational family saga that encapsulates not only the reasons but the who, what, when and how the Great Migration began and grew momentum as families escaped to Northern cities and Canada in the early Twentieth century.

Lost Seeds opens in the rural South with an impoverished sharecropping family (barely one generation from slavery) who are subjugated to the whims of a former owner (and his henchmen) who not only profit from this family’s labor (in a system designed to keep them perpetually indebted and destitute), but also berates and humiliates the father and sons by openly and freely sexually exploiting the mother and daughters on a regular basis. Even with the best intentions to flee from this abuse and madness, the family is unfortunately met with an even greater unimaginable loss.

While many are touched in this ill-fated odyssey, Sebastian focuses primarily on two half-brothers, a darker-complexioned Dublin (Dub) and much lighter-complected (passable) Timothy (Tim) who is obviously fathered by the former landowner (or one of his henchmen). Each grapples with aftereffects of what is now termed “generational trauma.” Sadly, there is no counseling for mental health, no therapy sessions to vent, no coping mechanisms to employ. Their parents self-medicate with alcohol and their mother becomes a social pariah; Dub goes-along to get-along to gain respectability, the best positions available to a black man at the time (he has a wife and many children to support) and increase social status at the risk of alienating his people and becoming another type of pariah: Uncle Tom and sellout. Tim covets the life of whites, he works and studies hard, does all the “right” things, and when his best intentions are thwarted (due to nothing more than racist policies), he experiments with “passing,” at a cost.

I immediately noted that Sebastian’s writing style is succinct and unembellished which does not diminish the atrocities and hardships endured by African Americans in this era. In fact, it renders a somewhat delayed reaction because it takes a few seconds to process the cruelty, the evil, the pain of the just-read passages. This book is layered and covers many overt and covert themes. I appreciated the “straight, no chaser” storytelling approach, but it may be perceived as a bit stilted for some.

Thanks to the publisher, Girl Friday, and NetGalley for an opportunity to review.