Set in the 70s when the Civil Rights movement was in its shaky, volatile stage, Cassie Dandrige Selleck’s The Pecan Man centered on the uncommon close relationships of Ora Lee Besworth, white and rich, to her maid Blanche and her family, and the maintenance/gardener man she hired, Eldred Mims, known as the Pecan Man.
In the fictitious town of Mayville, Ora Lee Besworth enjoys an all-knowing stature, informally awarded to a woman who was married to an accomplished man, and have served several charitable organizations and donated in fund-raising events. Her life took a more interesting – and we can say, mind blowing – turn when she further involved herself in the family of her black maid, Blanche, and allowing a black man (Eldred Mims) to work for her and paying him way more than what most people pay the black population.
You have to remember, this is a story set in a time when people can freely refer to the blacks as colored, niggers, and negro. They were the subjects of ridicule, suspects of crimes, targets of violence.
As you read The Pecan Man, you have a fair idea of how the story will pan out – always in the demise or as the Pecan Man said “the odds were against us” of the blacks. But the narration will keep you reading. Selleck wrote this story like she was speaking right across you on a warm summer afternoon as you’re drinking sweet iced tea (or a fruit punch, whatever floats your boat). The language is spot on and brings you to the heat of the moments. She describes the setting so magnificently that you don’t need to force yourself to picture Mayville. The town comes alive right infront of you.
I can’t remember the last time I cried so hard because of a book. Selleck shattered me to my core. She exposed injustice, unfairness, arrogance and yet she did not fail to resurface the values of hope, love, and commitment through her characters. Her storytelling was a revelation of the paradox that is humankind.
There is no clear definition of a happy ending here. The reader is left on her own to decide if she was happy or sad after she closes this book. I was torn. There was so much love, mystery, and to a certain degree, innocence and ignorance in the way the events have turned out with the characters involved in every single one of them that it is difficult to pinpoint the last feeling I felt from this novel.
I believe that’s what great stories do, it stirs you and refuses to keep you still. It pushes you to ask more questions and delve deeper into the psyches of the characters you feel you have known so much after spending four hours of just reading about them.
Selleck wrote a book that won’t allow her reader to let go of it until she’s done. The story is so real and you can’t help but ask yourself if there was indeed an Ora Lee Besworth during that point in humankind’s history.
The Pecan Man reminded me of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird because of the theme of social injustice. What Selleck did to differentiate her novel from Mockingbird was to lay out the deepest emotions of the narrator (Ora Lee) and narrates this with unmistakable passion.
These lines will prove it:
Blanche never wore a uniform again. When I asked her not to, she did not ask why. In her usual candid way, she said simply, “I can change my clothes, Miz Ora, but I can’t change my color. They’s always gonna be people who expect what they expect.”
“You’re absolutely right, Blanche,” I nodded. “And I can’t change anyone’s expectations but my own.”
Just when you thought you are winding down from the intense emotions, the last chapter smacks you with an unexpected twist that ties up some loose ends.
Get your handkerchief ready or have a box of tissues within your arm’s reach before you open this book.
It is heartwarming as it is heartwrenching.
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