Brett Rogers

Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (review)

book: the fascinating (if prurient) scenes of quick-draw surgery (a kidney stone removed in eighty seconds); the filth of mid-Enlightenment London; the brilliant trip through Europe to St. Petersburg during a snowy winter; the mysterious house of Mr. Canning, the rich hermaphrodite. The end of the book is entirely unexpected, though we know, from the first scene, that Dyer will die young; the last chapters have the lovely quality of a summer river easing itself through a meadow, and strike a sustained note of calm rare in fiction. (MB)