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Cast Two Shadows: The American Revolution in the South

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Cast Two Shadows: The American Revolution in the South

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Overview

A young girl living in South Carolina during the American Revolution discovers the duplicity within herself and others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547351155
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/01/2000
Series:	Great Episodes
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	327,320
Lexile:	610L (what's this?)
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

ANN RINALDI is an award-winning author best known for bringing history vividly to life. A self-made writer and newspaper columnist for twenty-one years, Ms. Rinaldi attributes her interest in history to her son, who enlisted her to take part in historical reenactments up and down the East Coast. She lives with her husband in central New Jersey.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

[star] "Impeccably researched, vividly detailed, and filled with very human characters."
—Booklist

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Editorial Reviews

Gr 5-9-The prolific Rinaldi's latest piece of historical fiction focuses on the Southern colonies during the American Revolution. War reaches Camden, SC, in 1780, and Caroline Whitaker's privileged world comes undone. For the lively 14-year-old, things are already uncomfortable; her household is split between her beloved brother Johnny's Loyalist military service and her father's unabashed support for the Patriots. In rapid succession, Caroline then witnesses the brutal execution of a childhood friend, sees her father imprisoned for refusing to declare loyalty to King George, and, along with her mother and sister, becomes a prisoner in their own home when British troops occupy the plantation. The stress, fear, and confusion bring to light one of the family's greatest secrets: Caroline's birth mother, whom she never knew, was a slave in the Whitaker household. When word comes of Johnny's court-martial and brutal punishment, Caroline undertakes a journey to bring him home, accompanied by her maternal grandmother, Miz Melindy, a slave who is also a skilled healer. Both expect to face danger, but neither of them anticipates how significant their travels will be for Caroline's future. Rinaldi has incorporated prodigious historical research and provocative themes to produce a deftly plotted and fast-paced novel.-Starr E. Smith, Marymount University Library, Arlington, VA

School Library Journal

Skeletons come and go from a wealthy South Carolina family's closet when the British army arrives in this tale set during the Revolutionary War. While sister Georgia Ann has taken to dining nightly with haughty Lord Rawdon, Caroline Whitaker, 14, scorns the occupying officer; she has seen a friend hanged and her Patriot father thrown into prison. Word comes that brother Johnny, a member of the Loyalist militia, has been wounded, so Caroline and her "negra" grandmother, Miz Melindy, set out to bring him home. Caroline not only learns that Johnny has switched sides, but that her birth mother, Miz Melindy's daughter, didn't die (as she had always been told); she was shipped off to the West Indies as the price of Caroline's acceptance as a Whitaker. Deftly incorporating facts into the background but leaving most of the violence offstage, Rinaldi (Mine Eyes Have Seen, 1998, etc.) keeps the focus on her characters, developing an entertainingly contentious rapport between Caroline and Miz Melindy while strewing the cast with rough men and widowed or abandoned women. Georgia Ann eventually becomes Rawdon's doxy, then is summarily dropped from the story, and Johnny, willing to risk his life to save his slave, breaks off with the Catawba women he had been seeing for years in the name of appearances. In the end, Caroline has no trouble marrying into a white family, a seeming paradoxþconsidering the pervasive consciousness of racial differences hereþthat Rinaldi doesn't explain. Anna Myers's Keeping Room (1997), a less disingenuous story set in the same place and time, offers a more direct view of the unusual brutality that characterized the war in the Carolinas. (bibliography)(Fiction. 12-15)

Kirkus Reviews

"Rinaldi's books are always impeccably researched, vividly detailed, and filled with very human characters; they are also about something that matters."—Booklist
"An authentic setting, realistic dialogue, and believable characters in a suspenseful novel that is difficult to put down."—The Alan Review
"A deftly plotted and fast-paced novel."—School Library Journal
"Rinaldi's fans will scoop this up."—The Bulletin
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From the Publisher