Our Place in Time

In this debut novel, a white middle-aged war veteran reflects on his relatives' history as he faces the prospect of reuniting with his estranged family.

Grover McKeen feels a great deal of angst over an invitation to visit his father, a man he hasn't spoken to for 30 years. Readers later learn the schism occurred when Grover was recuperating from a head injury received in the Korean War. Although the Marine would eventually regain his sight in one eye, he was totally blind at the time. During his father's visit, Valory, Grover's black nurse, entered the room, and the patient said, "This is the girl I plan to marry." His father responded: "Many her if you must, but know...you will be disowned and disinherited." Now this invitation challenges Grover to decide whether he is ready to offer forgiveness. Crawford works off this pivotal moment to jump back in time and begin the tale of the McKeens, told through the voices of principal characters over successive generations. Patrick McKeen "left Ireland with his wife and two children in 1846 to escape the potato famine and settled near Savannah, Georgia." With a mule and two slaves, he planted 20 acres of cotton, ultimately expanding his farm to 100 acres. After losing his wife and children to malaria, he married Iva McCurry and sired a son, Sean. The McKeens lost everything in the Civil War, and in 1876, 16-year-old Sean left for Florida, where he succeeded in restoring the family to its-former life of privilege. While Crawford's dialogue is often stilted, the assortment of first-person narratives brings the characters to life. And her description of Sherman's occupation of Savannah in 1864 is poignant: "The slaves...they came to liberate were intimidated and terrorized, the fields were stripped of food....The troops slaughtered livestock...and the mansion was plundered for valuables and burned....Gone were the glory days." The second half of the novel takes Grover back to the family's Florida homestead in Ocoee, accompanied by Valory. At this point, his siblings begin to add their voices to the engrossing saga, as the family confronts the past, trying to rebuild what was broken so long ago.