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In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams
In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams has been awarded the 2019 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award by the Wisconsin Council for Writers.
When several families of slaves escape their plantation in the boot of Missouri, they run north toward Washington Island, Wisconsin where they hope to find a life in freedom. Washington Island in the 1850s was about as remote from slave-holding southern states as it was possible to get in the United States. They escaped before the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Act, which made it legal for bounty hunters to capture any black person they claimed was an escaped slave even in abolitionist states like Wisconsin.
"In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams" tells the story of their escape on the Underground Railroad through three states and then their effort to found a fisherman's community at West Harbor on the island. They are led by a charismatic black preacher, Tom Bennett, who even attracts white settlers to West Harbor to hear him preach. Joshua Simpson, the hero of the novel, struggles to leave the days when he was regularly whipped on the Bulrush Plantation and live his life as the member of a free community.
As the community tries to find ways to secure their new home, living with white, mostly abolitionist, settlers, the Justice of the Peace, Joel Westbrook, threatens all they have worked to achieve.
When several families of slaves escape their plantation in the boot of Missouri, they run north toward Washington Island, Wisconsin where they hope to find a life in freedom. Washington Island in the 1850s was about as remote from slave-holding southern states as it was possible to get in the United States. They escaped before the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Act, which made it legal for bounty hunters to capture any black person they claimed was an escaped slave even in abolitionist states like Wisconsin.
"In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams" tells the story of their escape on the Underground Railroad through three states and then their effort to found a fisherman's community at West Harbor on the island. They are led by a charismatic black preacher, Tom Bennett, who even attracts white settlers to West Harbor to hear him preach. Joshua Simpson, the hero of the novel, struggles to leave the days when he was regularly whipped on the Bulrush Plantation and live his life as the member of a free community.
As the community tries to find ways to secure their new home, living with white, mostly abolitionist, settlers, the Justice of the Peace, Joel Westbrook, threatens all they have worked to achieve.
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First published August 15, 2019
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About the author
Thomas Davis
11 books11 followersThomas Davis is an American writer and has served as the Chief Academic Officer, President, or Acting President of five tribal colleges and universities. He also helped found the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium, which represents indigenous controlled post-secondary institutions of higher learning from the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the Far East.
Davis has written and had published non-fiction, fiction, and poetry books and has had articles and essays appear in a number of magazines and academic journals. He has also had plays performed in Minnesota and Wisconsin. His novel, In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams, won the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award in 2019. A powerful performer, he has given poetry readings in colleges, universities, and in other venues throughout the United States and in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
Davis has written and had published non-fiction, fiction, and poetry books and has had articles and essays appear in a number of magazines and academic journals. He has also had plays performed in Minnesota and Wisconsin. His novel, In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams, won the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award in 2019. A powerful performer, he has given poetry readings in colleges, universities, and in other venues throughout the United States and in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 30, 2019
While putting my thoughts together to write this review, I came across a quote by Mahatma Gandhi I immediately felt encapsulated the journey and destination of Thomas Davis’ compelling new novel: “The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall.”
In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams,, its title taken from a Pablo Neruda poem, begins painfully, cruelly, despairingly, throwing the reader into the brutality plantation slaves were regularly subjected to. Yet, from the first encounter with fourteen-year-old Joshua, his shirt and flesh cut through, his stubbornness and resentment riled, his resilience tested from a particularly vicious whipping, we also meet the central theme of the novel: slavery might seem to succeed in owning the bodies of men, women, and children, but only because it unconscionably misjudges the power of resistance in their hearts, minds, and souls, and the risk they are willing to take for freedom and life as it is meant to be lived.
This meticulously researched historical fiction is set before the Civil War, based on actual people and events. Originally, as is noted at the back-end of the novel, it was a sonnet sequence. Thankfully, as Mr. Davis is a master of poetic language and form, a sonnet, whether Shakespearean, Miltonian, Spenserian, Italian, French, or Terza Rima, heads each chapter. In contrast, his prose is appropriately and effectively folksy, clearly conveying the perspective, experiences, and emotions of the story’s characters, especially the young Joshua, who travels both literal and metaphoric miles in his odyssey from rebellious, enslaved child to responsible, unfettered adult.
The story follows a group of Missouri slaves that includes families, some reunited after years of separation, the elderly, young children, and adolescents like Joshua. They are led by an imposing, determined, paternal preacher as they escape to the slave-free but not altogether safe north via the Underground Railway. Mr. Davis’ gripping narrative portrays the fear, hardship, starvation, exhaustion, and relief of these desperate travelers making their way for hundreds of miles on foot off the beaten path through thick woods, mud and otherwise rough terrain, or hidden in wagons, suffocating and cramped, here and there recuperating in safe houses and the kindness of abolitionists. Their flight is under constant threat due to Fugitive Slave Acts that makes capturing runaway slaves a lucrative business. Through Mr. Davis’ empathetic writing, the anxiety of knowing that in a moment their flight to freedom could be ended—their lives turned back to estrangement from those they love and enslavement by those who “care” for them only as chattel—is also the reader’s unsettling experience.
Fannie Barrie Williams, the author of “Black Women in Nineteenth Century American Life” wrote that the most savage thing about slavery was “its attempted destruction of the family instinct of the Negro race in America.” In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams gives this travesty real lives the reader becomes deeply invested in. This important and moving story of a black fishing community of West Harbor, Washington Island, Wisconsin, insists that the savagery of slavery can be—must be—obstructed. Mr. Davis speaks to the need for all human beings to live freely, individually, uniquely while forming families, friendships, and community; to be at liberty to compete and cooperate, to feel love returned and even unrequited, to know how life is naturally given and taken, to enjoy the refuge of home, to have work and leisure and an education, to make plans and pursue hopes and dreams.
In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams,, its title taken from a Pablo Neruda poem, begins painfully, cruelly, despairingly, throwing the reader into the brutality plantation slaves were regularly subjected to. Yet, from the first encounter with fourteen-year-old Joshua, his shirt and flesh cut through, his stubbornness and resentment riled, his resilience tested from a particularly vicious whipping, we also meet the central theme of the novel: slavery might seem to succeed in owning the bodies of men, women, and children, but only because it unconscionably misjudges the power of resistance in their hearts, minds, and souls, and the risk they are willing to take for freedom and life as it is meant to be lived.
This meticulously researched historical fiction is set before the Civil War, based on actual people and events. Originally, as is noted at the back-end of the novel, it was a sonnet sequence. Thankfully, as Mr. Davis is a master of poetic language and form, a sonnet, whether Shakespearean, Miltonian, Spenserian, Italian, French, or Terza Rima, heads each chapter. In contrast, his prose is appropriately and effectively folksy, clearly conveying the perspective, experiences, and emotions of the story’s characters, especially the young Joshua, who travels both literal and metaphoric miles in his odyssey from rebellious, enslaved child to responsible, unfettered adult.
The story follows a group of Missouri slaves that includes families, some reunited after years of separation, the elderly, young children, and adolescents like Joshua. They are led by an imposing, determined, paternal preacher as they escape to the slave-free but not altogether safe north via the Underground Railway. Mr. Davis’ gripping narrative portrays the fear, hardship, starvation, exhaustion, and relief of these desperate travelers making their way for hundreds of miles on foot off the beaten path through thick woods, mud and otherwise rough terrain, or hidden in wagons, suffocating and cramped, here and there recuperating in safe houses and the kindness of abolitionists. Their flight is under constant threat due to Fugitive Slave Acts that makes capturing runaway slaves a lucrative business. Through Mr. Davis’ empathetic writing, the anxiety of knowing that in a moment their flight to freedom could be ended—their lives turned back to estrangement from those they love and enslavement by those who “care” for them only as chattel—is also the reader’s unsettling experience.
Fannie Barrie Williams, the author of “Black Women in Nineteenth Century American Life” wrote that the most savage thing about slavery was “its attempted destruction of the family instinct of the Negro race in America.” In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams gives this travesty real lives the reader becomes deeply invested in. This important and moving story of a black fishing community of West Harbor, Washington Island, Wisconsin, insists that the savagery of slavery can be—must be—obstructed. Mr. Davis speaks to the need for all human beings to live freely, individually, uniquely while forming families, friendships, and community; to be at liberty to compete and cooperate, to feel love returned and even unrequited, to know how life is naturally given and taken, to enjoy the refuge of home, to have work and leisure and an education, to make plans and pursue hopes and dreams.
January 2, 2020
I wanted to love this book because of my love for Washington Island, but the writing was so awful. The story had potential but the author really could have benefitted from an editor, not only for syntax but for grammar and spelling.
May 31, 2020
This fascinating book is based on “hints in the historical record” of an 1850's black fishing community on a remote Wisconsin island at the northern end of Lake Michigan. Author Thomas Davis takes us there. We begin with a group of slaves—including children, adults, and the elderly—that escape bondage in Missouri and survive the perilous journey north. What happens next is the true heart of the story and what makes the book so compelling. After slavery, everything must be created anew: identity, family, friendships, education, livelihood, community, and community leadership. There is triumph and joy in seeing this happen, but it also happens within the context of the times and the danger created when the Fugitive Slave Act is passed in 1850. I read this book several months ago, and its characters, ideas, and themes have returned to me over and over again. It's a book that has stayed with me and I'm very glad to have read.
January 10, 2024
3.5 stars. Extraordinary sonnets based on history and fleshed out in story. Felt like author had a little trouble finding Joshua's voice first half of book. Behold an example of the sonnets:
They built outhouses first, then cleared a plot
Of pine and brush to plant their garden seed.
Out in the lake they fished, felt fear recede.
A Stockbridge Indian, while they'd hid, had brought
Them dreams the night the lightning's fierce onslaught
Had blued night skies, and in their need
To keep on running, hiding, mutinied
Against their strength, the freedom they had sought -
But now, around a campfire as their sense
Of freedom slowly leached away despair,
The preacher dreamed alive the consequence
Of living on an island where the air
Loosed liberty in lungs, and, as, intense
His words rang out; their lives became a prayer.
They built outhouses first, then cleared a plot
Of pine and brush to plant their garden seed.
Out in the lake they fished, felt fear recede.
A Stockbridge Indian, while they'd hid, had brought
Them dreams the night the lightning's fierce onslaught
Had blued night skies, and in their need
To keep on running, hiding, mutinied
Against their strength, the freedom they had sought -
But now, around a campfire as their sense
Of freedom slowly leached away despair,
The preacher dreamed alive the consequence
Of living on an island where the air
Loosed liberty in lungs, and, as, intense
His words rang out; their lives became a prayer.
August 29, 2020
This is such a great read! I enjoyed learning more about Wisconsin's part in the Underground Railroad. I also thought it was ingenious that Joshua was the narrator. We are learning and discovering as he learns and discovers We feel his joy and terror. All the characters were well-drawn and complicated, especially the Preacher, Joshua's mother and father. The slave experience is stark, needful. As a historical fiction novel, the book is also a mystery because it attempts to explain what happened to this Black community on the remote shores of Washington Island. Highly recommended!
January 8, 2026
Learning that slaves were moved as depicted in this book was fascinating and I loved that it was set in Door county, not far from where I have long resided, and very much love it there!
The writing wasn’t fantastic, however.
The writing wasn’t fantastic, however.
December 3, 2020
I wasn’t impressed much by the writing. It was an interesting read though and I was able to learn more about the move north some slaves took.
September 27, 2025
This was an interesting book but seemed to stay at times. I would have like to hear more about the journey to get to Door County
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews