Talmadge Farm

April 22, 2024
Daughtry debuts with an expansive panorama of the 1950s and ‘60s American South, when tobacco ruled the land and desegregation was in its infancy. Gordon Talmadge, wealthy inheritor of his family’s Talmadge Farm, makes his money off the backs of others—including the two sharecroppers on his land, Will Craddock and Louis Sanders. But tobacco’s star is waning, and Gordon, reluctant to diversify in any way, is entrenched in the past, putting his fortune—and family-owned bank—at risk. When his intoxicated son, Junior, tries to rape Louis’s 15-year-old daughter Ella, it sends shockwaves that change their lives and Talmadge Farm forever.
Daughtry expertly contrasts the experiences of Gordon’s privileged family with that of his sharecroppers, particularly the grim realities that the Sanders endured as a Black family in the midcentury South. Both Will and Louis are up against impossible odds as they try to provide for their families, and when Louis’s son, Jake, is blamed for harming Junior when defending his sister, he’s forced to flee their small town for Philadelphia, desperate to make ends meet so he can study medicine. Meanwhile, Gordon’s tobacco crops can’t keep pace with his spending habits, and he rashly decides to bring on a crew of migrant workers from another state—a choice that results in disaster.
Gordon—and society’s—treatment of the sharecroppers is painful to read, but Daughtry capably evokes harsh historical truths of the era, particularly the generational abuse that wealthy landowners inflicted on the descendents of enslaved peoples. The reverberations of that shake through the Sanders’s family as the story builds to some dark consequences, though some of the most reliable women, Ella and Mary Grace, overcome obstacles as they strive toward happiness. Gordon eventually faces some justice, though he never truly makes amends for his harmful behaviors. Change, of course, comes in the end, but the cost for all involved is steep.
Takeaway: Expansive portrait of mid century landowners and sharecroppers in the American South.
Comparable Titles: Nathan Harris’s The Sweetness of Water, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s The Revisioners.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B+
Marketing copy: A