Daniel Dickinson: Daniel

Quaker Faith Dept: He promises to maintain the values and practices of his Quaker faith, especially its abolitionist principles. But Daniel has never worked with his hands, much less driven a plow or erected a house. At an auction, he winds up purchasing a young black boy, and this moral compromise leads to an endless cycle of debt and brutality, where even efforts at decency go wildly awry, according to Globe and Mail. Daniel s moral failure parallels the sin of America s Founding Fathers, who affirm the presence of slavery in a New World meant to be characterized by equality and freedom. This unseemly drama plays out in the relationships between characters of various classes, castes and genders. Daniel s daughter Mary feels superior to his poor, illiterate wife. Ruth, the young wife, disdains Onesimus, the slave, because he is black. Mary develops a sisterly bond with Bett, a young slave woman, yet she does not hesitate to pocket the money she earns selling Bett s herbal remedies. The novel makes especially explicit the way white culture has exploited black labour, talents and ideas, a practice that echoes into the present day and this unusual form also describes Toni Morrison s 2008 novel A Mercy , in which a Dutch immigrant in the English colonies disregards his conscience to purchase a black slave. So it goes with Daniel Dickinson, the Quaker hero of Spalding s story. Daniel, a widower, is shunned by his congregation after he quickly remarries. His new wife is the family s servant girl, a Methodist who, at 15, is not much older than his daughter. The family make the perilous journey to Virginia, where Daniel plans to build a home and start life anew. Spalding invites us to roam Daniel s inner world. We share his grief for his lost wife; his rough love for his children. We enter into his silent prayers the speechless wonder of his faith. And yet still we see him as he really is: greedy, desperate and dangerously self-delusional. He lies, constantly, to himself, especially about the acquisition of slaves, justifying every act of expedience as a temporary necessity. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.