H. A. Maxson teaches English and writing at Wesley College in Delaware. He and his cousin Claudia H. Young have co-authored many books together. Their shared love of Delaware state history and teaching has resulted in many publications that are used in teaching history and social studies in the public schools in their area.
Claudia H. Young was born and raised in coastal New Jersey. After living in many locations across the country as a military family, she and her husband and children settled in Dover, Delaware, where they still live. Claudia retired from teaching elementary school and enjoys travel, golf and time with her children and grandchildren. She is an avid reader who thoroughly enjoys researching and co-authoring books with H.A. Maxson, her cousin.
HA Maxson and Claudia Young have crafted a crackerjack historical
drama with savagery and grace. Comfort is one of those novels that
unnerves the reader, the characters are vile, beautifully rendered,
and it action unfolds cinematically.
It's 1816, the summer that wasn't, and Comfort, a freed slave, is
sold back into slavery by her alcoholic, gambling-addicted husband,
Cuff, who is as bad as his name suggests. Comfort's historical
premise is based in fact, and meticulously researched, but history
doesn't weigh the narrative down, in fact Comfort's prose is
poetic, moving, even when describing the evil that people do to
each other.
Cuff is the low life kind of antagonist that readers love to hate.
He gambles, is superstitious, takes advantage of everyone. Cuff is
ostracized for selling Comfort back into slavery. That's one of the
books' hooks. Comfort has already escaped slavery once by buying
her freedom. Talented and capable, she's just barely free when Cuff
betrays her. Cuff is in the grips of addiction when he sells his
wife to the reverse underground railroad (Google it...it's real),
and spends the rest of the novel trying to figure out why he's the
most hated man in town. He's fogged up with gambling dreams,
shakes, and bottle madness. You almost feel sorry for him, but
reserve it. Cuff is necessary, and provides the moral backboard for
the reader to hate equally Joe Johnston, a slave trader, and the
master and mistress of the Osborne plantation, a dilapidated gothic
hellhole that as ugly as the villains who run them. Master Osborne
is nearly blind, and Mistress Osborne is jealously hateful of her
slaves, and between the two of them, Comfort, sold to them by
Johnston, finds no peace.
Comfort:
This isn't a novel whose purpose is to embrace the complexities of
the villains. The Osborne plantation is emblematic, perhaps
realistic, but Maxson and Young make the place feverish, fetid,
rotting; there is nothing remotely sympathetic about the place, or
their masters. Mistress breaks Comfort's fingers early in the
novel, forcing Comfort to the fields where she will be broken by
the hard labor; and its just what Mistress wants, for no one,
especially not a slave, can possess domestic talents that surpass
that of the lady of the house. Petty? Cruel? You bet, but it's not
grossly over the top either. The Osborne place is full of violence,
but it's the underlying hate under the characters hearts that make
the place reprehensible, to the reader, and to everyone else in the
novel. White people, respectable Christian land-owners, hate the
Osbornes. The kind of slave owners that slave owners hate and view
as scum of the earth.
The novel's protagonists are Comfort, and Esther, an octoroon slave
who flees her home and heads South, pretending to be white, to save
Comfort. While Comfort is the title character, Esther's story is
possibly the most dramatic, and the most harrowing. Esther must
pass for white, and take Comfort's baby south. She's paranoid, out
of her element, and terrified. Yet, It is this storyline that is
the heart of the novel, and where Maxson and Young's storytelling
shines.
Grace, in the face of evil, grace in the face of danger is how
Comfort, and Esther survive. "Comfort cut her glance toward from
time to time, but mostly she stared ahead at the smooth unbroken
motion of the hoe tearing weeds away from full grown plants,
smoothing out wrinkles in the earth, piling rocks and pebbles,
making hours disappear as the sun spun another cycle across the
warm blue sky." Comfort disappears into the work of the field. The
suffering is beautifully rendered, but doesn't feel exploitative,
or hypersensitive. In the end, Comfort's quick study and Esther's
knowledge of roots and herbs save them. Disguise, poison, betrayal,
all elements of high suspense, and though it all you root for
Esther, you root for Pompey the mute slave, you root for Comfort,
you root for her baby, pulled along by Maxson and Young's well
paced, graceful prose.
-- Scott Whitaker --Scott Whitaker, The Broadkill Review
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