A writer’s primary tool is not, as one might think, the typewriter, computer or pen; it’s not even language. None of those are set into motion without a simple precursor—curiosity. And it was curiosity that drove Alan Cheuse to write Song of Slaves in the Desert, a powerful and entertaining examination of the spectrum of life as balanced between the poles of freedom and slavery.
Cheuse is best known as NPR’s “voice of books.” He’s arguably the country’s most-respected book reviewer, a man whose taste and intelligence guides the reading of millions. Behind the familiar voice we hear is also a writer of powerful non-fiction and fiction. Behind that writer is an unquenched thirst for story—in the case of his newest release, history.
Song of Slaves in the Desert takes the reader into two worlds that are not ours, but which gave birth to ours. One narrative immerses us in the story of a slave family in 16th-century Timbuktu; the other unfolds in the American South before the Civil War. Nathaniel Pereira, a New York Jew, is sent to South Carolina to appraise his uncle’s plantation, where he encounters slavery for the first time.
Cheuse captures us with his careful prose voices. Nathaniel is gloriously full of himself, but as he witnesses the horrors of slavery his brash confidence is undermined. His first-person narration is vulnerable and affecting, yet shot through with an entertaining self-importance. In contrast, the portions that follow the journey of slaves are rendered with stark, searing attention to detail. The novel makes it perfectly clear why Cheuse’s voice is so familiar to us all. He is a master of many voices.
Of course, it is one thing to read the writer’s voices on the page, or even hear the reviewer’s voice on the radio. If a writer’s primary tool is curiosity, so too, is a reader’s. But when we put a face to the voice, or see the eyes that bring us a vision, just one question is answered; happily, many more come to mind. We can find the answers in books.
ALAN CHEUSE reads from Song of Slaves in the Desert on Saturday, July 9 at 6:30pm at Capitola Book Café, 1475 41st Ave, Capitola. Free.
