Thomas and Beal in the Midi

February 11, 2019
Tilghman expands his Mason family saga (Mason’s Retreat, The Right-Hand Shore) with this elegant novel about an interracial couple resettling in fin-de-siècle France to escape American miscegenation laws. In 1892, Thomas Bayly gives up his hereditary claim to Mason’s Retreat on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to marry childhood sweetheart Beal Terrell, daughter of farmworkers, granddaughter of slaves. Crossing the Atlantic by steamship, Thomas and Beal avoid controversy by keeping their marriage secret. A somewhat warmer welcome greets them in Paris, where they remain until Thomas purchases a vineyard in Languedoc. Challenges they face include beautiful Beal’s admirers: a Senegalese diplomat wants her as his third wife, a struggling artist wants her as his model, and a visiting businessman wants her with him in Boston. Tilghman captures relationships and landscapes in leisurely prose reminiscent of 19th-century fiction, and Thomas and Beal emerge like evocative figures in an impressionist painting. Tilghman’s story revisits themes from his best work: how family nurtures and oppresses, how land brings prosperity and ruin, and how American character is strengthened by enterprise and haunted by the past. This is an appealingly contemplative and compassionate novel.

March 1, 2019

More than 20 years after Mason's Retreat and six years after The Right-Hand Shore, Tilghman returns with the love story of Thomas and Beal. Love story, yes. Fairy-tale romance, no. In 1894 Maryland, for an interracial couple to marry, they must leave. Leave their families, leave the blighted orchards of the Retreat, leave America and its blighted legacy of slavery. Thomas and Beal begin their young marriage in France, first in Paris, then in the rugged southern region of Languedoc, where they grow grapes and eventually produce wine. In Paris, while Thomas spends his time in libraries researching their future, Beal fascinates the artists of the Latin Quarter and experiences personal freedom for the first time. When the couple moves south to the vineyard Thomas has purchased, she's apprehensive about returning to rural life. But their new surroundings provide space that their young, untested marriage and their crops need to flourish. Thomas is a patient man, and in many ways, his relationship with Beal is like the book itself, beautiful but multilayered, taking time to develop, occasionally frustrating but always rewarding. VERDICT Lovely literary fiction for not only fans of Tilghman's previous work but for anyone interested in that age-old question, What is true love? [See Prepub Alert, 10/22/18.]--Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2019
The lushly written third novel in a family saga follows an interracial American couple after they emigrate to escape bigotry in 1892.Tilghman won acclaim for his previous two novels about the Mason family of Maryland, Mason's Retreat (1996) and The Right-Hand Shore (2012). This book is a prequel to those, moving back a generation to Thomas Bayly, whose mother is heir to the thousand-acre Mason farm. The story begins with Thomas and his bride, Beal Terrell, landing in France after crossing the Atlantic by ship. They have been friends since childhood--Thomas' white family owned Mason's Retreat, Beal's black family worked it, first as slaves, later as employees. But the young newlyweds can't live as a married couple in the United States, so they depart on their wedding day. Their first months in Paris are dazzling as they learn the language and find their way around the metropolis, befriended by a group of American art students. The students jockey for the right to paint a portrait of Beal, a tall beauty with striking pale eyes. Her choice of Arthur Kravitz, a gruff New Jersey native, begins with him blackmailing her by saying he'll reveal her secrets but blossoms into a lifelong friendship. Meanwhile, Thomas is casting about for a profession and develops an obsession with winemaking. That leads to the couple's move to a farm in the rugged Languedoc, a place that Thomas falls instantly in love with but that Beal struggles to adjust to after the joys of Paris. Tilghman tells the story of their marriage over four decades; their struggles have little to do with race, much more to do with fidelity and communication. A recurring theme of innocent, even naïve Americans coming to understand worldly Europe recalls Henry James, as do the novel's astute psychological insights. Tilghman's prose can be seductively lovely, and he creates engaging, often surprising characters.This historical novel's evocative descriptions of fin de siècle France and skillfully drawn characters add up to a sensitive and satisfying portrait of a marriage.

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March 15, 2019
Third in his acclaimed Mason saga, Tilghman's (The Right-Hand Shore, 2012) beautifully contemplative novel observes his protagonists' uncommon marriage, showing how each must come into his and her own separately before they can flourish as a couple. In 1892, since their union was frowned upon in Maryland, Thomas Bayly and his African American bride, Beal, arrived in France to begin a new life together, leaving behind their disapproving families and his substantial inheritance. Amid Paris's upper-class art crowd, the sheltered, 19-year-old Beal attracts rival portraitists and the romantic advances of a Senegalese diplomat, while Thomas meets a comely Irish librarian while researching future prospects. He settles on winemaking and purchases an estate in the Languedoc, which obliges Beal to abandon her newly cosmopolitan lifestyle to follow him. Alongside Beal and Thomas and their skillfully delineated journeys to maturity, many secondary characters also stand out, including a kindly nun and a difficult Jewish painter with unique insight into Beal's state of mind. Belle �poque Paris and the southern French countryside are described exquisitely, as is the rich terroir that shapes the human heart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)