The Living Blood. - Review - book review

The Living Blood by Tananarive Due Pocket Books Hardcover April 2001, $24.95, ISBN 0-671-04083-9

Like Pauline Hopkins' turn of the century novella, Of One Blood, Due's plot features an underground colony of spiritually and technologically advanced Ethiopians and a black American doctor who goes to Africa looking for answers. Characterization is definitely Due's forte and readers familiar with her second novel will be gratified to see old friends like Dawit/David and his wife, Jessica. Those who have not read My Soul to Keep will enjoy the mounting suspense as the world-renowned Dr. Sheppard tries to unravel the strange case of "Mr. Perfect" (David), who concluded a series of murders by killing his five-year-old daughter. Sheppard's desperate search for Jessica, who may have a miracle cure for his son's leukemia, takes him from the child's deathbed to a remote village in Botswana.

When Sheppard is kidnapped and shipped back across the Atlantic like the many thousands of ancestors who made the Middle Passage, Due's thrilling tale offers a profound commentary on the abuses of the pharmaceutical industry. For the villains of the story are in the employ of a pharmaceutical conglomerate that seeks to control the mysterious cure Jessica and her sister have been dispensing in their medical clinic for terminally ill children. Due does not fully develop the fascinating theological implications of her story, about the "the living blood" of Jesus. Nor does she overtly challenge the exclusion of women from the community of immortals known as the Life Brotherhood, but she skillfully weaves her four main story threads into an engrossing, well-paced narrative.

Paulette Richards is the author of Terry McMillan: A Critical Companion (Greenwood Press, 1999).

COPYRIGHT 2001 Cox, Matthews & Associates
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group