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A lush, incantatory novel by
a Time magazine notable first novelist about three
generations of an African American family in the years leading
up to the Revolutionary War
Calvin Baker first entered the literary
landscape at the age of twenty-three with the publication
of Naming the New World, which Publishers Weekly
called “brilliant . . . [Baker] proves himself a powerful
new male voice in African American literature.” Since
his second novel, Once Two Heroes, Baker has continued
to be acclaimed by the major media from USA Today
to The Village Voice and GQ. And now, with
Dominion, Baker has written his most ambitious, important,
and timely book yet.
Dominion tells the story of Jasper
Merian, newly freed from slavery in Virginia at the close
of the seventeenth century, who leaves for the uncharted free
territory to the west. There, he aims to carve out a utopia
in the wilderness of the Carolinas. While grappling with the
legacy he has left behind, Jasper must build a home for himself
to pass down to his two sons—one enslaved, the other
free. Despite the hardships of frontier life and the malignant
local spirit Ould Lowe, Jasper and his wife, Sanne, manage
to build the thriving estate, Stonehouses. The farm passes
through three generations, ministered in turn by Jasper’s
son Magnus and his grandson Caleum. Their lives bring them
up against the natural (and occasionally supernatural) world,
colonial politics, the injustices of slavery, the Revolutionary
War, and questions of fidelity and the heart. When Caleum,
discharged from the colonial army, lingers in New Amsterdam
with another woman instead of returning to his family, the
threads binding Stonehouses together begin to unravel. Ould
Lowe, long restrained, again haunts the land, and, like his
grandfather, Caleum must ultimately face the demon.
Footed in both myth and modernity, Calvin
Baker crafts a rich, intricate, and moving novel, with meditations
on God, responsibility, and familial legacies. While masterfully
incorporating elements of the world’s oldest and greatest
stories, the end result is a bold contemplation of the origins
of America.
Calvin Baker first entered
the literary landscape at the age of twenty-three with the
publication of Naming the New World, which Publishers
Weekly called “brilliant . . . [Baker] proves himself
a powerful new male voice in African American literature.”
Since his second novel, Once Two Heroes, Baker has
continued to be acclaimed by the major media from USA
Today to The Village Voice and GQ.
And now, with Dominion, Baker has written his most
ambitious, important, and timely book yet.
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