“The Sand Banks, 1861”
by David Wright Faladé
from the August 31, 2020 issue of The New Yorker
David Wright Faladé is a completely new name to me. From my searches, it looks like he has published two books, both under the name David Wright. The first is a book of history: Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, from 2001. Then in 2016 he published a young adult novel called Away Running. On his website, you can find links to a few pieces of short fiction he has published.
In “The Sand Banks, 1861” he continues to look at the life of Richard Etheridge; however, because he is going back to a time before the historical record has a lot of information about Etheridge, when he is only thirteen, Faladé has written a novel, Nigh On a Bother, which is to be published in January 2022. This is all from the helpful interview with Cressida Leyshon. The interview is particularly helpful if, like me, you had not heard of Richard Etheridge, who was born enslaved in 1842 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, one of the first sites the North took over at the outset of the Civil War. Eventually enlisting in the Union Army. This Wikipedia article is a nice primer.
This sounds like a must-read! Here is how “The Sand Banks, 1861” begins:
We were just boys, ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds, five colored and one white. But for our smallclothes, each of us was most-all naked. We stood on the rickety reach of the pier, its planks care-laid but well used, us colored boy’s black glistening in the noontime bright, the white one not yet leathered like the sunbeat beefs that free-ranged the island. Our britches and coveralls and burlap shirts lay pell-mell near the spot on the short where Ebo Joe Meekins knelt, inspecting the line of the skiff he was refitting. The old Negor was either fifty or a thousand, the one age as imponderable to us as the other, and he paid us no more mind than we did him. On the water, cleat-hitched to the pier, rocked the dugout full of oysters that we were supposed to be ferrying over to Ashbee’s Harbor. Up and down it rolled with each leap or dive, as we plunged into the water one at a time or in twos and sometimes all six at once.
I like the way this takes some time to set the stage, and I’m very excited to sit down with the story and finish it today.
Please feel welcome to share any of your thoughts below!
I like his writing style. It reads as if written in the 1860s: “Care-laid but well used”. It’s an interesting opening set-up and I look forward to reading more of it.
I thought that the story was beautifully written and evocative of the Sea Islands in a time of great change. I wish I did not have to wait over a year for his novel about Etheridge
What a beautifully written piece. Coming from a mixed race woman this is so on point. The struggle with identity, the need for acceptance, the feeling of being lesser. Whoa im just blown away. Best short story I’ve read this year.
Dboss nailed it. Identity, the search for a father, knowing that he exceeds his half-brother Patrick in most things but will never be recognized, harshness from his mother — all well depicted. A more subtle depiction of the Black person’s plight in the South than most, it still shows the denial of Black humanity by White folks. Btw — unlike most excerpts, I think this functions well as a standalone story.
Absolutely excellent short story (even if an extract)…. one of the best of the year so far.
This was one of the best, if not the best short story I’ve read so far this year in the New Yorker. What a marvelous writer David Wright Faladé is. The naturalness of the dialogue and emotion, the steady unfolding of the complex interrelationships among the enslaved and the free (and familial) counterparts, instead of a “plot”, is the engine of the story’s momentum. And nothing is “told” everything is shown. The setting also shows the imminent Civil War from a unique and literally insular perspective. I really enjoyed every word. As a short story it can stand alone but I can also see it as part of a larger story I want to read.
Finally read this and decided to check in and see if I had a dissenting view, which I often do. But no, we are all singing from the same hymnal. The interview is good, too. He talks about the nonfiction book, although he doesn’t explain why it’s not going to be released for over a year.
It was with great surprise and longing that I finally dove into THE SAND BANKS 1861 as my CITY OF NEW YORK birth certificate reads MICHAEL CHARLES MIDGETT. At the age of 1 I was back on The Outer Banks in my grandparents “cottage” on the beach at Nags Head, less than a mile from Jockeys Ridge, There was a deadly shipwreck off shore (USS HURON) and tales of a night time shoot out with a UBOAT (the wreck of the U85 was a few miles down the beach). I haven been to my old stomping grounds in some 26 years as family dynamics ARE complicated. Great story!
Amazing coincidences.
Paradoxically, because I liked this so much I was a bit disappointed to realize that it was just the start of a book. Here’s the question about excerpts. Are they good because they preview work or merit one might not know about. Perhaps–I had never heard of this writer but I am really looking forward to this book because of many of the comments above about the subtlety and nuance of the character’s situation. Or should the New Yorker not publish excerpts as some on this site have said. I’m obviously of two minds. I don’t think this quite works as a short story, it’s clearly the beginning of a longer tale, but (as I said) it absolutely makes me want to read more and Falade is an excellent writer in terms of style, characterization, themes and general narrative propulsion. The slow immersive opening where we realize that John B is the narrator’s dad only after awhile is respectful of the reader and the narration doesn’t do too much of the lifting for us.
Ken —
I e made my peace with excerpts. A few lately, including this one, have stood on their own. OTOH, a large friction of true short stories don’t stand up to scrutiny. With the editors, we just take what we get.