Balm audiobook

Gorgeously written. Such growth between Wench and Balm. The overall story could have been fuller and more throughly realized. Interesting structure. Madge and Hemp were such compelling characters. And my god. On a sentence level the writing was perfect. Satisfying. Enviable. Bravo.

I’ve read books dealing with slavery and the emancipation of the slaves after the American Civil War. I’ve read books dealing with traditional herbalists from a variety of cultures. I’ve also read books that deal with trance mediums who can contact the spirits of the dead. Yet I’ve never read a book that focused on all three of these themes. Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is that book. I received two copies of this book for free in return for this review. They are a paperback ARC directly from the publisher, and a digital ARC via Edelweiss. This is a book that is primarily about healing. It's about the slow process of healing from the wounds of slavery, divided families and the mental anguish that resulted from these experiences. I am grateful for the artistry of this author that allowed her to shape a tale of three individuals that is also the story of the beginning of America's emergence from a terrible time in its history. Because I received two copies I am doing a giveaway of the paperback ARC that I received from the publisher. To participate in the giveaway and read the rest of my review go to http://wwwbookbabe.blogspot.com/2015/...

What a wonderful book!!! I was fortunate to win an Advanced Reader's copy from Goodreads. Even though this is a fiction book, the author thoroughly researched many facts in the story. The story takes us back to the end of the Civil War and three characters: Hemp, Sadie and Madge. I grew to really care about them and was anxious to know their stories and what happened to them. I want to read the author's first book "Wench." Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a Harvard graduate and a truly wonderful writer!

This book is appropriately named. The theme of this book is a balm or salve to the soul. It’s another postwar freed Black peoples story. However, it’s full of the hope, resilience, and newfound love of a people starting over. I enjoyed this because I bonded with ALL of the characters.

Read this novel in one sitting, because it kept me so engrossed in the story. Perkins-Valdez moves effortlessly between voices and uses the historical time period to not only reveal the hardships the characters had to face due to race/class, but also exposes how it adds complexity to the development of their identities and sense of family.

31. [Balm] by [[Dolen Perkins-Valdez]]The Civil War has ended, and three very different people make their way to the booming prairie city of Chicago in hopes of finding a better life. Sadie has arrived from York, Pennsylvania, to join the much older husband chosen by her father, only to find Samuel's body in the parlor, one of the victims of a train derailment. For Sadie, his death brings freedom: she didn't love him, is happy to leave the parent who would marry her off for money to save his book-binding business, and has become heir to a sizable fortune. But what she lacks is a purpose--until she begins to hear a voice. Not just any voice, but that of James Heil, a young man who was killed in the war. James is able to put Sadie in touch with others who have crossed over, and with the help of his brother, a doctor, she establishes herself as a successful medium.Madge, a free black woman from Tennessee, was raised by her mother and aunts to be a healer, but life there is hard (and so are the sisters), so she decides to try her luck in the city. Madge not only has herbal knowledge but a healing touch. After a chance encounter, she is hired as a housemaid by Sadie and secretly runs a medicinal business out of the kitchen. She falls in love with Hemp, a freed slave who is looking for the wife and stepdaughter that were sold in the waning days of the war. After Sadie fails to reach Annie on the other side, Madge feels sure that she is still alive and that any feelings she herself has for Hemp are doomed.The author does a fine job of creating the environment of a burgeoning Chicago, the aftereffects of the Civil War, and the limitations of these three characters as second class citizens due to race and/or gender. The stories of Sadie, Madge, and Hemp are interesting on their own but gain greater significance as they are interwoven. Secondary characters--including Dr. Heil; Madge's family; Sadie's father, her German cook, Olga, and her kindly black driver, Richard; the minister who take in Hemp; and more--are all individualized and believable. Overall, a very rewarding historical novel.

This book was awesome. I couldn’t put it down. The premise is based on the lives of newly freed slaves after the Civil War. The reader is given a bird’s eye view of a number of individuals and their attempts at navigating freedom. In navigating this course, the characters (Madge, Hemp and others) will deal with love, loss, reconciliation, redemption and other unexpected trials that can push them forward or cause them to lament in the past. Dolen Perkins-Valdez has the characters succeeding. They overcame the pain of their past, held on to the things they desired and grasped what was necessary to forge forward. New families were formed and memories from times past no longer held them bound. Thank you Valdez for pinning a wonderful work that attest to soothing and healing. Yes, “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.”

A tender tale about characters espousing hope as they search for love and acceptance and attempt to make peace with their painful pasts and shortcomings. Ultimately, Balm is about the healing that one finds when they are able to fully acknowledge the places in which they hurt but also recognize the pain in others. This is a story about possessing our power to heal ourselves and to heal others, but it is also a courageous story of the intertwining lives of unsuspecting yet connected characters. All hurting, these characters find their restoration and healing amid transition and a post-war society by embracing the commonalities that connect them all - pain, suffering, loss, as well as the need to be well and live meaningful lives.

Wow. Wow wow wow. Cannot recommend this one enough!

This book was fascinating to me from the first paragraph all the way through to the last page (which came too soon). The theme of forgiveness is woven through the lives of each of its characters whose paths cross in Chicago just after the Civil War. My favorite character was Madge, a black woman who was born free in a family of rural herbalist women in Kentucky. Forgiveness was the necessary key to healing and finding oneself in this tale. Self-forgiveness. Forgiveness of those who had hurt or wronged or abused us. While focusing on the healing of memories, the healing of bodies and the healing of spirit, this beautiful story weaves a magnificent tapestry of pain and suffering, joy and hope that is the fabric of human life.

I received an advance reader's edition of this book from HarperCollins. Where her first novel, Wench, was about the tragedy of the Civil War for those living through it, Balm is about the slow process of recovery after the war and "how the war was the vehicle through which we found our voice as a nation." This novel focuses on three individuals that are end up in Chicago at the end of the war and whose lives intersect. Madge was raised a free black by three sisters who healed from a living. Sadie finds herself a wealthy white widow after her stranger of a husband suddenly dies after their wedding. And Hemp is a freed slave who has been separated from his wife and looks to begin his life as a freedman in Chicago. All three lives have been irrevocably altered by the war. For instance, Sadie, after trying to accept a marriage she didn't want, finds herself alone in a strange city; "her only future had a corpse in it, and all she could do was stare at his grotesque face as she scrambled to pose the questions she'd planned to ask" (7). Yet Sadie soon finds an alternate path when the spirit of a soldier killed in the war begins to communicate with her. Sadie becomes a medium, appealing to the many grieving lost loved ones. Meanwhile, Madge, employed as a servant in Sadie's home, grows her healing abilities and her ability to diagnose and heal through touch. And Hemp faces the daunting prospect of accepting that he may never find his living wife, but must find a way to create a new life without her. The fragility of life is overwhelmingly present throughout the novel. "Even in this free world, white men handled his fate as loosely as seeds thrown into a dirt row" (74). All three main characters seem acutely aware of the fact that in a single moment their fates may change and the path of their life may take an abrupt turn. But over the course of the novel, all three characters maintain their resolve to carve their own path to the extent possible, to retain control that was previously denied them. This novel is also about the tenacity of hope, of the possibility for healing even after unimaginable destruction. "In a land so devastated by death, the best healing balm was hope" (260). Perkins-Valdez has done an excellent job of recreating the world of Chicago in the aftermath of the Civil War. The character experience the bitter cold and winds of the city; "Sometimes, it shoved her so brutally that she skipped a step. It was like being birthed all over again" (15). The sense of confusion and misplaced persons teeming within the great city is also felt as Hemp tries and fails to find his wife. In many ways the three main characters are on the same journey of healing and claiming of their own story, yet in other ways their experiences seemed so disparate and disconnected, just three stories in the sea of those who survived the war.

This is a story of 3 adults in Chicago after the end of the Civil War: Hemp Harrison is a freed slave from Kentucky looking for his wife; Madge is a freeborn black woman from Tennessee looking to escape the stultifying home of her mother and two aunts; and Sadie is a newly married, newly widowed white woman from Pennsylvania. It’s not a great book, but it is nicely done with beautiful writing. The three characters come together in what seems like a natural convergence. The story is about the ways we can and should, and the ways we cannot, let go of the past. If some ways the paths of these three characters are only tangentially linked, especially the relationship between Hemp and Sadie which is almost nonexistent. It was nicely done and felt natural. It’s not an exciting story, and it is a subtle story. Perkins-Valdez touches on the issues of a black woman traveling by herself, but doesn’t delve into unnecessary detail; she touches on the issues of a white woman, a young white woman at that, since Sadie is only 19 when she’s married, living by herself; I enjoyed the way these issues were brushed up against, but that Perkins-Valdez didn’t try to make them the central theme to a story that was not about gender issues, but was about healing.The ending wasn’t as strong as I would have liked. (view spoiler)[That Annie is dead, left me wondering what would Perkins-Valdez have done if Annie had been alive. I know that’s a ludicrous way to put it because Perkins-Valdez is the creator, but it just seemed a little weak after so much promise of Annie being alive that she would conveniently be dead. I also thought Sadie’s relationship with her father could have used a little something more. I’m not sure what, because I feel like the line between enough and too much is fine, but as one of the central relationships, I thought it could have used more feeling; I should have had more of an emotional stake in it.(view spoiler)[ Overall though I thought it was a well done venture into a pivotal time in our history. (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdezhttp://www.dolenperkinsvaldez.comSynopsis: After the Civil War, Madge, Sadie and Hemp move to Chicago to start a new life. Madge has a power to heal the suffering of others and Sadie has the power to commune with the dead. Because of personal struggles neither can fully engage their powers enough to be useful. Hemp comes to Chicago because of the promise for a better life but instead the three battle for survival.Review: Perkins-Valdez is a unique writer. She has an alluring way of writing grimacing work that can educate people while they enjoy a good story. I enjoy that I've recently read books with a wide range of diversity. The education from novels is sneaky and powerful, an author can let you into their world where you can experience a different culture in your imagination. Although, this will never be close to equivalent of real life experiences, for those who can't experience other ethnicities (because well, we can't change our ethnicity or race) this is the closest way we can learn empathy, by hearing an insider's story.I'm not usually a person for magic in books (except Harry Potter, duh) but the realistic and historical aspects welded beautifully with the magical world. It turned out to be something I loved about the book. It wasn't overwhelming.I think this book speaks for itself. It is intelligently written, thoughtful and creative and above all else, inspiring. I definitely recommend this to those who need a pick-me-up. You will root for the main characters every step of the way, struggling with the book as they struggle but pushing through in hopes for a better end.Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Amistad (May 26, 2015). 288 pages. Fiction: Historical, African-American. I received an ARC through a Goodreads giveaway.Review from www.amandanicolebooks.WordPress.com