Catfish : a novel

Catfish, is a coming-of-age-story set in South Louisiana during the Jim Crow 1960s, steeped in the complex and conflicted culture of that time. In Catfish, Susie Burton, a headstrong young white girl born to a prominent local family, narrates her journey from complacent daughter to rebellious, questioning teen. From the vantage point of the present day, forty-five years after the events of this novel, Susie tells of her discovery that her own family—enshrined within the walls of an affluent antebellum home, to all appearances an ideal Southern clan—was not at all what it seemed. Though this knowledge could have easily destroyed her, she was buoyed by the love and loyalty of a local black family whose patriarch is the novel’s namesake: Catfish. A masterful storyteller, Catfish narrates tales that take root in Susie, weaving into her dawning consciousness the terror, cruelty, and surprising richness of post-Civil-War, southern plantation life. Through Susie’s relationship with Catfish and his extended family, especially Rodney, the young black man who becomes her first love, Susie and her young friends learn to take charge of their destinies. There is love here, but it is love shadowed by a family’s betrayal and the violence of the local Klan. Like The Help in its historical setting and trenchant exploration of the Jim Crow South, Catfish will leave readers questioning how much has really changed over the last four decades. It is Madelyn Edwards's commitment to human rights and social and economic justice that steered her to write this story. She was born and raised in Marksville, LA, population 5,000, a town much like the fictional Jean Ville in which Susie comes of age. Its the 1960s and early 70s in small-town South Louisiana. Susanna Burton, a white girl whose traumatic home life is hidden behind her fathers political power, finds acceptance and forbidden love with an African American family and a young black man named Rodney Thibault. Rodney provides the tenderness and warmth Susie has never known in an era when anti-miscegenation is the law of the land. Even after the Supreme Court strikes down such discrimination, the Ku Klux Klan, other white supremacists, and Susies parents stand in the way of love. Forced to go their separate ways and live several states apart for years on end, Susie and Rodney continually find their way back together. At the heart of the novel, giving Susie and Rodney the strength to overcome the harshness of their world, and telling Susie stories of his familys escape from slavery and oppression, is Catfish, patriarch of the Black family that accepts Susie more fully than her own blood. In her debut novel, Catfish, Madelyn Edwards subtly explores the chasm between black and white families that existed in the Deep South in the 1960s and 70s when Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan defied federal laws. While Catfish helps Susie Burton find her real self and set a course for her future during her time spent with him in the Quarters, she and Rodney embark on a journey fraught with violence and abuse as everyone from the Klan to Susies dad try to keep them apart. If readers find themselves routing for Rodney and Susie at the end of the book, Madelyn feels she has accomplished her task of blending color lines and making prejudice a forgotten emotion with "Catfish." In her debut novel, Catfish, Madelyn Bennett Edwards subtly explores the chasm between black and white families that existed in the Deep South in the 1960's and '70's when Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan defied federal laws. She tells the story of an older Negro man named, Catfish, who befriends a young white girl and shows the child what a true, loving family is all about. Susie Burton finds her real self through her love for Catfish, his granddaughter, Marianne, and the Burton's help, Tootsie. Susie falls in love with a colored boy, Rodney Thibault, Marianne's cousin. The young couple's journey is fraught with violence and abuse as everyone from the Klan to Susie's dad try to keep them apart. If readers find themselves routing for Rodney and Susie at the end of the book, Madelyn feels she has accomplished her task of blending color lines and making prejudice a forgotten emotion with Catfish