Walk Through Darkness (Paperback)

In his novel, David Anthony Durham tells a story of William, a fugitive slave, who places his life in danger to find his pregnant wife and deliver her to freedom. With little knowledge of his surroundings and only occasional help from random strangers, William travels from down South to Philadelphia. During his travels, William encounters many hardships, which force him to grow into a stronger man. First, he is tricked, then captured, by a group of slave traders and prepared for sale. Forced to endure the cramped quarters and debasing actions of his captors, he begins to lose hope of his goal, only to be freed through a violent uprising, which results in the death of his captors. On the run again, William reaches Baltimore and stows away upon a trading ship, only to be found and once again returned to shackles. It is here, while befriended by the ship's Captain, that William begins to learn the larger lessons of life. With one more chance to reach his goal, he is given the opportunity to escape, and through a stroke of luck, finally ends up in Philadelphia. Hungry, tired and lost, William succumbs to yellow fever and would have died had it not been for the help of a stranger. This Samaritan only asks that he understand her altruistic ways and her desire to help him become a free man. Fully recovered, he discovers his wife's whereabouts and makes plans to rescue her from her surroundings.

Throughout William's journey, we follow a parallel story of a Scottish tracker, Andrew Morrison, who is hired to find, capture, and bring William back to his master in one piece. While his motives are unclear at first, it becomes obvious that Morrison's past history within America has created a man who is at odds with his identity and is wrestling with his quest for redemption. With his trusted hound at his side, Morrison eventually ends up in Philadelphia to find and capture the fugitive slave.

The book ends with a suspenseful account of the various forces that are working for and against William in his quest for freedom. With violence an everyday possibility, many lives are ruined because of their participation in helping an innocent person seek his dream. However, even with powerful currents working against him, William ends up on his way to freedom through the help of many of those who were opposed to the evil of slavery that flowed through American veins.

Walk Through Darkness is a heavy read that yields an enormous amount of satisfaction. It is clear that David Anthony Durham has become a literary force to reckon with and is among the new cadre of African American writers like Paul Beatty, Guy Johnson, and Colson Whitehead, who have brought new stories into the mainstream literary world, without sacrificing their integrity. Once again, Durham has used his deft literary brush to create a tale complete with vivid pictures of life and death during this most turbulent time in American history.

William, owned by the cruel St. John Humboldt, becomes a slave Everyman when he escapes and tries to reach Pennsylvania, a free state where he hopes to find his beloved Dover, who is expecting his child. His travails are those of all slaves, and Durham uses them to show the myriad ways men exert power over others--as well as the ways good men can show their shared humanity. Betrayal, imprisonment, torture, sexual assault, and many other forms of degradation enter the story as William tries to deny his fate. In a parallel narrative, Andrew Morrison, an immigrant whose early experiences in Scotland and America are similar to William's, describes his dogged search for William until they meet in a concluding showdown.

Nature symbolism, most notably that of snakes and crows, combines with some wonderful images ("his eyes were small things, two tadpoles slipped between his eyelids") to give depth and color to Durham's style. Despite his subject matter, he largely avoids sensationalism because he is more concerned with the characters' realistic reactions to horrific events than with descriptions of the horrors themselves--until the end. There the story finally succumbs to melodrama and excessive coincidence in a conclusion that may be a bit too easy to satisfy some of his new fans. Mary Whipple