Esteemed poet Phillip B. Williams (Thief in the Interior; Mutiny) offers a vast and rapturous feat of fabulism in his first novel, Ours. This is a 19th-century historical epic created with both a vivacious enthusiasm for folkloric traditions and a deep contemplation of what it means to be freed from the violent machine of slavery in the U.S.
Ours is a town where freed men and women could build lives insulated, by enchantment, from white supremacy. The place springs from the audacity of a mysterious woman called Saint, who aims to "kill" slavery outright. After claiming a plot of land in Missouri, she raids Southern plantations, ushering the owners unto death while giving safe passage to Ours for "the newly freed." Through bewitched stone carvings, she makes this town inaccessible to the outside world.
"Freedom didn't mean safety," however. "And if there's anything more shockingly unpredictable than freedom, it's love." This idea is the truly marvelous fulcrum around which Ours pivots. As the novel sprawls across time, with the narrative occasionally bending back onto itself through a dreamy sort of chronology, the newly liberated face the dilemma of fashioning freedom from scratch, as best they can, on their own or with each other.
Williams has a voice that soars across each page, breathing life into his dazzling array of characters--the lovers and the malcontents, the queer and the mystical, the brazen and the cautious. At an incredible 600 pages long, Ours is nevertheless a novel worth savoring. --Dave Wheeler, senior editor, Shelf Awareness