While Berry's first novel, the bestselling Redemption Song , would have been a tough act for any writer to follow, it is perhaps the very success of that book that keeps this one from reaching its potential. Ava looked down and saw that what Valentine had retrieved was in fact a manuscript. It was the original manuscript of Redemption Song, that book that had been like a Celestine Prophecy or Alchemist for black folks. Ava had read Redemption Song and enjoyed the way it weaved the story of love between an enslaved man and woman with the love of their modern-day descendants. It was a fun read and had become a popular and almost cult-like phenomenon.
Freedom is a morass of conflicts.
On the one hand he is very, very good at what he does. Go with your heart,' his mother had always told him. And it worked almost all of the time. This establishes that Freedom is someone who has found fame and fortune on his own terms. Yet, throughout our encounter with him, Freedom strikes the reader as fully creative and entirely free.