Thomas and Beal in the Midi

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. [em](Apr.) [/em]