The Living Blood (Immortal Brethren series #2)
Tananarive Due, 2002
Simon & Schuster
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780671040840
Summary
Acclaimed for her riveting fiction, which tests the boundaries of supernatural suspense, Tanarive Due returns with a gloriously imagined tale of an ancient cult's undying powers—now embodied by a child who can grow to become either monster or savior.
Jessica Jacobs-Wolde worked hard to rebuild her life in Maimi after the disappearance of her husband, David, and the death of her daughter Kira at his hand. Four years later, she is still coming to terms with a shocking truth: David, who is part of an ancient group of immortals—a hidden African clan that has survived for more than a thousand years—gave Jessica and their second daughter, Fana, the gift of his healing blood.
Now Jessica is running an isolated clinic in Botswana—one that has swiftly earned a reputation for its astounding success rate in curing desperately ill children—and she hopes to find the tribe of souls with whom Fana truly belongs. Just three and a half years old, the girl is displaying signs of tremendous power—conjuring storms, editing her mother's memories, and striking people down with a thought. Her growing abilities need to be tamed—and soon. Already Fana's dreams are haunted by a shadowy entity, someone—or something—she can only call the Bee Lady.
Unaware that they are being tracked by Lucas Shepard, a doctor from Florida who hopes to save his dying son, and by a group of fortune hunters who will stop at nothing to exploit the power coursing through her veins, Jessica journeys to Ethiopia in search of the Life Brothers. There, she will be reunited with her immortal beloved. There, the full force of Fana's powers will be revealed. And there, Jessica,David, Fana, and the good doctor Shepard, though himself a mere mortal, will engage in an epic and transcontinental battle over the ultimate fate of humanity.
Blending the supernatural with a thrilling vision of our times, this is a powerful and sweeping tale of love, horror, immortality, and redemption from an astounding storyteller. (From the publisher.)
This is the second in Due's "African Immortals" series, which begins with My Soul to Keep (1997). The third book in the series is Blood Colony (2008).
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Education—B.A., Northwestern (USA); M.A., University of
Leeds (UK)
• Awards—American Book Award, 2002
• Currently—lives in Southern California, USA
Tananarive Due—pronounced tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo—is the American Book Award-winning author of nine books, ranging from supernatural thrillers to a mystery to a civil rights memoir.
Her most recent novel, Blood Colony (2008), is the long-awaited sequel to her 2001 thriller The Living Blood and 1997’s My Soul to Keep, a reader favorite that Stephen King said "bears favorable comparison to Interview with the Vampire."
Due also collaborates with her husband, novelist and screen-writer Steven Barnes. Due and Barnes published Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Novel, which they wrote in collaboration with actor Blair Underwood. Publishers Weekly called Casanegra "seamlessly entertaining." In the Night of the Heat, is the second in the series.
The Living Blood, which received a 2002 American Book Award, "should set the standard for supernatural thrillers of the new millennium," said Publishers Weekly, which named The Living Blood and My Soul to Keep among the best novels of the year. The Good House was nominated as Best Novel by the International Horror Guild. The Black Rose, based on the life of business pioneer Madam C.J. Walker, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. My Soul to Keep and The Good House are both in film development at Fox Searchlight.
Due’s novel Joplin’s Ghost blends the supernatural, history and the present-day music scene as a rising R&B singer’s life is changed forever by encounters with the ghost of Ragtime King Scott Joplin. Due also brought history to life in The Black Rose, a historical novel based on the research of Alex Haley—and Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, which she co-authored with her mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due. Freedom in the Family was named 2003's Best Civil Rights Memoir by Black Issues Book Review. (Patricia Stephens Due took part in the nation’s first “Jail-In” in 1960, spending 49 days in jail in Tallahassee, Florida, after a sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter). In 2004, alongside such luminaries as Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison, Due received the "New Voice in Literature Award”" at the Yari Yari Pamberi conference co-sponsored by New York University’s Institute of African-American Affairs and African Studies Program and the Organization of Women Writers of Africa.
Due has a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University and an M.A. in English literature from the University of Leeds, England, where she specialized in Nigerian literature as a Rotary Foundation Scholar. Due currently teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. Due has also taught at the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s Writers’ Week, the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and the summer Imagination conference at Cleveland State University. She is a former feature writer and columnist for the Miami Herald.
Due lives in Southern California with her husband, Steven Barnes; their son, Jason; and her stepdaughter, Nicki. (From www.tananarivedue.com.)
Book Reviews
Like the hurricane that threatens Florida at its climax, this stunning sequel to My Soul to Keep (1997) is an event of sustained power and energy. Its predecessor introduced Jessica Jacob-Wolde, a journalist who belatedly discovers that her "perfect" husband, David, is a renegade from a secretive 1,000-year-old clan of Ethiopian immortals who will kill to prevent members from sharing their life-extending blood with mortals. David has returned to Africa to do penance among his Life Brothers, and Jessica, whom he resurrected from the dead with a transfusion from himself, follows close behind, setting up a jungle clinic to dispense dilutions of her blood as medicine. Jessica's daughter Fana, whom David did not know Jessica was pregnant with when he transfused her, has begun to show magical powers, and her precocious divinity is the catalyst for a volatile brew of subplots that includes a violent schism among the Life Brothers, an alternative medicine guru's desperate efforts to save his leukemic son with Jessica's blood and a force of unspeakable evil trying to channel itself through Fana. Due exercises assured control over her wildly gyrating story, exploring its drama in terms of African culture, African-American experience and a variety of parent-child relationships. What's more, she fuses clich d themes from a variety of genres jungle adventure, transcontinental espionage, natural disaster into an amalgam that reclaims their powers to excite. A rare example of a sequel that improves upon the original, this novel also should set a standard for supernatural thrillers of the new millennium. My Soul to Keep was one of the most talked-about debuts in the horror field since the advent of Stephen King. Expect heavy interest sales for this sequel.
Publishers Weekly
In this sequel to My Soul To Keep, protagonist Jessica Jacobs-Wolde has joined the ranks of immortals thanks to a ceremonial infusion of magical blood from her husband, David, a member of an ancient, secret society the Life Brothers. After being accused of murder, David disappears, leaving Jessica alone in Florida to await the birth of their daughter, Fana. Two years later, Jessica and Fana move first to South Africa and then to Botswana. With rising horror, Jessica watches as little Fana begins to demonstrate tremendous psychic powers that give her control of life and death over mortals. Jessica believes that with their age-old knowledge, only David and his Brothers can give Fana the guidance she needs. So Jessica ventures into Ethiopia to find the Colony to which her husband has retreated. How unfortunate that this intriguing plot is so poorly executed. The writing is flaccid, and the story moves at a glacial pace. Better editing might have made this a more readable novel. Not recommended.
Library Journal
Readers will be glad to see the resurrection of the characters from Due's last novel, My Soul to Keep (1997), but there is nothing to keep readers new to the author from enjoying this sequel. It reunites Jessica and Dawit for the rearing of their daughter, Fana, and in the many pages of this mesmerizing narrative, Due shares the lives of Jessica and her sister, Alex, since they learned of Dawit's existence as a Life Brother. From Miami to South Africa to Botswana to Tallahassee, these women are constantly reminded of Dawit's extraordinary curse-gift through the positive powers and negative abilities of the child Fana. These women's determination to use the living blood in a healing and charitable way to help children is the decision that sets this novel on its course. In five compelling sections, Due explores human behavior, scientific discovery, medical and natural healing practices, and religious ideology. Due ends the novel at a place to begin the next installment. — Lillian Lewis
Booklist
This supernatural thriller continues the story of reporter Jessica Jacobs-Wolde, four years after the death of her first child and the disappearance of her husband. She has revealed the secret of the living blood (from book one) to her sister, a doctor, and together with Fana, the child she gave birth to nine months after her husband's disappearance, the sisters live as quietly as possible in remote African villages. The constant action takes Jessica and Fana eventually to Ethiopia, to the place where the immortals live, to be reunited with Fana's father, Jessica's husband. It doesn't stop there, however, and the suspense builds as the action goes from Africa back to the States in a desperate chase to save a small boy's life, to protect the miraculous blood, to find a way to live in the world as immortals. Due is a wonderful storyteller. She is a young woman who already has an impressive career as a writer and journalist. As an African American, writing about African Americans, she brings layers of cultural nuance to an already complex story. The living blood obviously has religious significance, and there is much in this story that ties African Americans to African culture and history. One of the Christian churches that traces back to the early centuries of Christianity is the Ethiopian church, an important fact that pulls this story together thematically. Most readers will want to search the Internet or the library for photographs of the underground churches in Ethiopia so vividly described in this thriller. Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. — Claire Rosser
KLIATT
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Living Blood:
1. Based on the evidence he had, was it cowardly or courageous of Lucas Shepard to leave his dying son to search for the magic blood? Did he truly believe it was real, or was he only fooling himself?
2. In what ways has Jessica changed since My Soul to Keep and in what ways is she still the same?
3. In what ways has David changed since My Soul To Keep and in what ways is he still the same?
4. If you were Jessica—or David—would you be able to forgive your partner for the events of the past? Why/why not?
5. Did you always believe David and Jessica would be reunited? Why/why not?
6. Why does David hesitate to see Jessica in the Life Colony in Lalibela?
7. What parenting mistakes, if any, does Jessica make with her daughter, Fana (Bee-Bee)? What one thing should she have done differently?
8. Do you believe Fana is good, evil or neither?
9. What do you think of Khaldun’s separatist philosophy? Based on the events in this book, do you think he was right or wrong to keep mortals and immortals apart?
10. If you had Living Blood, would you share it with the world? At what price? What precautions would you take?
11. What are the Shadows?
12. Do you believe the Living Blood is really the blood of Christ, or is that a story Khaldun has made up? Why might he lie?
13. What is the role of fate and destiny in this story regarding Lucas? Jessica? Fana?
14. What do you think Fana will be like in the future?
(Questions from www.tananarivedue.com.)
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