Lalita Tademy finally reveals what five generations of her family members wouldn’t dare discuss: their link to the seldom-mentioned Colfax Massacre. On Easter Sunday in 1873, more than 100 freed Black men who had just voted in a crucial election in Colfax, Louisiana, were butchered by a group of White supremacists. The incident has been called one of the bloodiest acts of the Reconstruction era. In Tademy’s new novel, Red River (Warner Books, $24.99), one of the heroes who survives and lives to tell this unforgettable tale is Sam Tademy, her great-great-grandfather. As she did with her 2001 blockbuster, Cane River (Warner), the author blends her own family history, complete with poignant real-life photos, into her work to produce gripping fiction. And although this is just her second novel, Tademy writes with the skill and grace of a master storyteller.
Credit: BOOK, Time Inc. Digital Studio.
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By the time Tademy was thriving in her career as a vice-president for Sun Microsystems, a Silicon Valley technology company, she had already started doing research on her family’s history. In the early 1990’s, she had pleaded with an octogenarian aunt to tell her everything she knew. Her beloved relative’s response stunned her. “Some of our people were involved in the Colfax riots,” her aunt told her quietly. “Some of them got out, and some of them didn’t.”
Tademy, 58, became even more driven to unearth the truth about what happened. After leaving her high-profile job in 1995, she racked up serious frequent-flier miles, becoming a regular at local Louisiana courthouses and other government buildings. From her findings she first created Cane River, an unexpected best seller that has tallied more than 1million copies. Tademy began working on the second book almost immediately after she finished the first in 2000. Whereas Cane River documented four generations of her maternal grandmother’s Louisiana kin, Red River explores the complicated past of her father’s side of the family, its ties to Colfax, and the intertwining lives that led to a rebirth her forebears never would have imagined.
Tademy’s not ready to reveal what she’ll focus on in her third work, which she says is now just a “kernel” of an idea. But she knows that when she does sit down to write, her family memories and inspiration will be with her. “These books have changed my life,” she says. “I am so indebted to my ancestors for not only surviving but prevailing over unimaginable situations. It’s a reminder that we are a strong people, and we must never forget it.”
30-Second Book Excerpt
"In this exclusive passage from Red River, a heartbroken Sam Tademy surveys the carnage after the Colfax Massacre: “There are dozens of bodies, faces frozen in finality, some with mouths open and eyes shut, some the reverse…. Sam rushes from one to another. These are men he knows, men he stood with shoulder to shoulder in the courthouse…. Their wives and children are in the swamp, waiting for them to come home.”
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