THE AMALGAMATION POLKA

Wright squeezes nearly every feature of the nineteenth-century novel into this fat sausage of a book. Narrator Michael Emerson would be commended if he had merely gotten through it all without stumbling, but his flawless, controlled delivery becomes the thread for this rambunctious tale of a boy growing up with abolitionist parents and slave-owning grandparents. A pirate in upstate New York? This story has one. North and South, politics and war vie together in this story, and Wright's allusive and heavily alliterative style may not be every listener's cup of tea. But once Emerson's steady delivery carries one through the early chapters, Wright's recreation of the moral controversy over slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War is compelling. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 07]