Cane River

I finished Cane River for my book group last week. It's an intergenerational saga of mothers and daughters who lived as slaves, survived the Civil War, and continued raising their families into the 20th Century. What makes this book different is that author Lalita Tademy based the novel on her own family tree. She used genealogy records to create the plot's outline, and then imagined the details and the motivations of her ancestors.
This book was picked for Oprah's Book Club in 2001, and it's not hard to see why. Stylistically, "Cane River" is an easy and pleasant read. It also has a strong theme of female empowerment. Finally, it deals with important issues of racism and oppression in complex and realistic ways.
I have to add that I literally could not put this book down. The last book I remember being that absorbing was Running with Scissors. That's such a TOTALLY different book (wacko mother abandons her gay teenaged son to her guru shrink), I hesitate to mention it in the same post as "Cane River." But it did have that one identical quality, where I just had to find out what happened next to these fascinating characters.