Reviewed by Tammy
TITLE: Come to the Oaks 
AUTHOR: Bryan T. Clark
PUBLISHER: Cornbread Publishing
LENGTH: 276 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2017
BLURB:
In 1845, as America is drowning in its own racial conflict, in a time when forbidden love has to remain a secret, can two young men find love when one has everything to lose, and the other has nothing?
For Tobias, a young African man, life has ended before it began. Snatched abruptly from his homeland and enslaved into the Antebellum South, grand homes and majestic oak trees meant little to him. Now he is considered the property of other men, but his spirit would not be broken.
The awkward Benjamin Nathanael Lee lives a privileged life. His father owns the largest tobacco plantation south of the Mason Dixon line. Ben wants little to do with the harsh realities of running a plantation – that is, until he meets Tobias, the one person that changes everything for him. Wealth, greed, and power brought them together. The same now threatens to separate them forever. The two men are on the verge of losing the one thing that matters: their love for one another. Against the odds, they steal off and embark on a journey to find freedom: the freedom to love one another and to live a life without the chains of slavery. Come to the Oaks is the tale of a forbidden romance – a love forged by two young men as they journey through a land that is tearing itself apart.
REVIEW:
The year is 1845, America is embroiled in racial conflict, slavery has been outlawed but that doesn’t mean that everyone has their slaves their freedom it just means that they’re more secretive about it.
Ben is the son and heir to the largest tobacco plantation south of the Mason Dixon line. Ben lives a privileged life, he’s never known what it’s like to struggle or have to really work. When a new shipment of slaves arrives in town, Ben goes with his father to select a few strong workers but finds himself fascinated with a sick, weak young man who Ben convinces his father to let him buy.
Mamadou has been stolen from his family and country. He’s been bought to a new country to be sold as a slave when he’s purchased by a white man called Ben. Because all of the slaves are given Christian names Ben renames Mamadou, Tobias. After Ben gets Tobias home to the plantation he makes sure he’s being well cared for by Miss Gee – gee. Because Tobias’s father was a very well-known medicine man in Africa many traders came to do business with them, as such Tobias has a slight knowledge of the english language.
As the story progresses we read about the forbidden friendship that grows between Ben and Tobias. Their friendship and eventual love could and would be the death of them both if anyone found out about it because not only are slaves still bought and sold in Kentucky, they’re raped, beaten and murdered without a second thought!
Bryan T. Clark has done an incredible amount of research into this topic which comes through in every word, although he paints a very vivid picture of life back in the 1800’s for slaves Bryan tactfully manages to bring to life the dark history of American slavery, yet there is a glimmer of hope with the relationship that develops between a white man who fell in love with a black slave. Even though some of the events have been watered down so we aren’t sent into shock from the brutality of life back then you always have it in the back of your mind that the reality was so much worse!
RATING: 
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