Black Cloud Rising, David Wright Faladé's immersive first novel for adults (after the YA novel Away Running), is set during the Civil War and told from the conflicted perspective of Sergeant Richard Etheridge as he takes part in a campaign that sends Black soldiers deep into Confederate loyalist territory. The African Brigade is composed in large part of formerly enslaved men, which gives the expedition emotionally charged dimension as the brigade emancipates enslaved people and punishes former slaveowners. In one particularly dramatic scene, General Edward Augustus Wild--a ferocious abolitionist who lost an arm in an earlier battle--directs that a slaveowner be whipped by one of his soldiers before giving a newly emancipated woman "the chance to settle old scores." It's a rousing declaration of purpose for the African Brigade, though Etheridge's response is uneasy as he imagines his father, who once owned him, being whipped by his mother.
As the campaign progresses and the violence intensifies, Etheridge struggles to separate his feelings about their mission from his feelings toward his father, his half-sister and his cousin. He learns that the latter, a childhood playmate, has joined a band of Confederate guerillas. This deeply researched work of historical fiction devotes much more time to the campaign's wearying tasks of marching and provisioning than the brief but ferocious outbreaks of fighting. Just as central to the novel are the battles taking place in Etheridge's heart, as he must learn to stop searching for belonging among people incapable of seeing him as fully human. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine