'Shuck's daughter.' Posey poured Shuck another drink, brandishing the elegant bottle of Crown Royal. 'Who's in Mississippi?' Millicent jerked around, leaned on the bar top like she might slide down to Shuck and Posey, save whoever it was in Mississippi. Great multi character dialogue scenes are the toughest thing to do in fiction writing, but Nicholas is able to do it brilliantly, plumbing the differences of opinion, bringing us up to date on the history, both in the South and in Detroit, the range of opinions, while showing us the personal relationships between characters and Shuck's dreams and fears. Then Shuck opens a letter, and it's Celeste telling him she has gone down for 'One Man One Vote.' It's a real thing of beauty. Each of the customers has their own take, on race history in Detroit, on Emmett Till, whether one should go down to the South and fight for civil rights or to attend to the fight right there in Detroit. One of my favorite scenes occurs early on, in Shuck's bar, where all the regulars are discussing recent events in Mississippi.

The lyricism of place, her fully formed and questioning characters, the wonderful originality of each scene, brings each part of this dramatic story vividly alive. Nicholas, besides being a well-known actress, screenwriter and veteran of the Civil Rights Movement herself (she was in the SNCC and one of the founders of the Free Southern Theater), is an amazing novelist. One of the best novels ever about the Civil Rights Movement. The urge to protect his daughter clashes head-on with his belief in advancing the rights of black Americans.

It also follows her father, Shuck, a bar owner in Detroit, a numbers man and self-professed 'race man' who believes in progress and the future of black people-who is both furious and terrified when he learns that his precious daughter has already gone down to Mississippi. It follows Celeste Tyree, an idealistic, carefully raised black University of Michigan sophomore who is swept up in civil rights issues on her campus, and decides to join the movement and go to Mississippi, to put her beliefs into action. Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas is a mesmerizing novel set during Freedom Summer in 1964, when young people from all over America were converging on Mississippi to register black people for the vote.

Freshwater road by denise nicholas