Down the Wild Cape Fear: A River Journey through the Heart of North Carolina

A fictionalized account of the race riot in Wilimington, NC, in August 1898.

When black citizens win elected offices in 1898 Wilmington, NC, white citizens stage a coup. Based on real events. Twenty-fifth anniversary edition.

The first major study of slavery in the maritime South, The Waterman's Song chronicles the world of slave and free black fishermen, pilots, rivermen, sailors, ferrymen, and other laborers who, from the colonial era through Reconstruction, plied the vast inland waters of North Carolina from the Outer Banks to the upper reaches of tidewater rivers. Demonstrating the vitality and significance of this local African American maritime culture, David Cecelski also reveals its connections to the Afro-Caribbean, the relatively egalitarian work culture of seafaring men who visited nearby ports, and the revolutionary political tides that coursed throughout the black Atlantic. Black maritime laborers played an essential role in local abolitionist activity, slave insurrections, and other antislavery activism. They also boatlifted thousands of slaves to freedom during the Civil War. But most important, Cecelski says, they carried an insurgent, democratic vision born in the maritime districts of the slave South into the political maelstrom of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

This night not only marked the end to the drought, but also the end to the long-held secret we'd kept hidden under the magnolias. Magnolia, South Carolina, 1980 Austin Foster is barely a teenager when her mama dies giving birth to twins, leaving her to pick up the pieces while holding her six siblings together and doing her best to stop her daddy from retreating into his personal darkness. Scratching out a living on the family's tobacco farm is as tough as it gets. When a few random acts of kindness help to ease the Fosters' hardships, Austin finds herself relying upon some of Magnolia's most colorful citizens for friendship and more. But it's next to impossible to hide the truth about the goings-on at Nolia Farms, and Austin's desperate attempts to save face all but break her. Just when it seems she might have something more waiting for her--with the son of a wealthy local family who she's crushed on for years--her father makes a choice that will crack wide-open the family's secrets and lead to a public reckoning. There are consequences for loving a boy like Vance Cumberland, but there is also freedom in the truth. T. I. Lowe's gritty yet tender and uplifting tale reminds us that a great story can break your heart . . . then heal it in the best possible way.