The Puzzle Jug is a story that's bided its time beside the Savannah for more than 150 years until the conditions were just right for it to be spoken. And now that time has arrived.
Real people once lived beside the Savannah River on what was known in those days as the old Lamar Swamp Plantation. Some never ventured farther than the opposite bank, living their entire lives with Augusta, Georgia in view. Others stood on that same shore carrying memories of another river, another language, another home. They'd been forced to live in another world where everything they loved lay on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The story of The Puzzle Jug begins on July 4, 1856, as 8-year-old, Hannibal undergoes a rite of passage guided by Granny Venus, the 90-year-old matriarch of the Swamp Plantation. Literate and disciplined, with an ethos forged by African and Creek traditions, Venus witnessed the promise of liberty as a girl during the American Revolution, when those closest to her became Black Loyalists. Their unwavering vision to fight to make their own choices defined the way she saw her life from that moment forward.
No matter how reality appeared in the outside world, no one owns her. Venus is a universe unto herself. She operates from a completely unique set of rules: the ones she determines for herself and her Swamp Village loved ones through rituals and celebrations she created.
As South Carolina hurtles toward Civil War, driven by those obsessed with preserving the institution of slavery at any cost, an entire community - enslaved and enslavers alike - face a karmic reckoning when a group of captured African children is delivered to the plantation woodyard.
Each must decide whether to shield the children at their doorstep, or stand aside as the southern status quo engulfs them.
Through quiet, yet deliberate resistance carried out within the narrow boundaries imposed upon them by their country's culture, the story explores what happens when people venture to the edge of their own soul.
The Puzzle Jug is presented as a serialized historical novel told in a dramatized audio form.
If you are new, begin with Chapter One or listen to the latest chapter by clicking one of the buttons above.