SONG YET SUNG

By: James McBride.

Publisher: Riverhead, 360 pages, $25.95.

Review: McBride has wrought an action-packed, romantic and suspenseful drama of slave times, but the novel's naked polemics will leave readers wondering, "Is Bill Cosby right?"

When Bill Cosby unloaded a rambling diatribe against contemporary black culture in 2004, he cracked open a generational -- and class -- fault line in the black community that continues to vex (and give Cosby antagonist Michael Eric Dyson material for his brilliant rebuttals).

Although "Song Yet Sung," the new novel by James McBride, is ostensibly about slave times, Cosby's rant against the morals and tastes of the hip-hop generation are implicit throughout. "Song Yet Sung" pits slaves against slave catchers and "good" slave owners against the innate immorality of slavery in a tale that is surprisingly adventure-heavy yet still finds time to suggest that 21st-century black people aren't living up to the sacrifices their ancestors made to be free.

Set in Maryland's oyster-sated villages along the Chesapeake in the waning years of slavery, "Song Yet Sung" begins in a place of despair: Liz Spocott, a beautiful young woman, has been shot in the head by a slave catcher and lies shackled to a roomful of other slaves who had been destined for freedom, but were instead run down like dogs. The head wound affects her thinking; she begins to dream of the future and gains the moniker "the Dreamer" for being a "two-headed" woman, or clairvoyant. Circumstances allow a mass escape, and Liz is on the run again, vacillating between a thirst for freedom and a longing for sweet death.

Liz's dreams of the future are pretty much Cosby's perceptions of the present: "She dreamed of Negroes driving horseless carriages on shiny rubber wheels with music booming throughout, and fat black children who smoked odd-smelling cigars and walked around with pistols in their pockets and murder in their eyes. She dreamed of Negro women appearing as flickering images in powerfully lighted boxes that could be seen in sitting rooms far distant, and colored men dressed in garish costumes like children, playing odd sporting games and bragging like drunkards -- every bit of pride, decency, and morality squeezed clean out of them."

The plight of the Dreamer spreads throughout the countryside's black folk thanks to a secret form of communication called "the code," which utilizes blacksmith hammering, clothing choices and quilt designs to pass information. The Dreamer soon falls into the care of Amber, a relatively well-treated slave who himself is almost ready to run. Searching for Liz is a colorful collection of slave catchers, most notably the nasty and dreaded Patty Cannon. McBride throws in a handful of other colorful characters -- such as an almost feral woods-dweller called "the Woolman," and the fisherman's widow, who thinks of her slave Amber as family, but owns him nonetheless. As the circle tightens around the Dreamer, McBride ratchets up the suspense and the romance and "Song Yet Sung" rides to a riveting conclusion.

McBride, whose previous work includes the celebrated memoir "The Color of Water" and the novel "Miracle at St. Anna," which has been optioned by Spike Lee, is great with gentle scenes as well as action. One of the many charms of "Song Yet Sung" is the manner in which McBride paints slavery as such an unnatural state that the whites instinctively know they'll never keep a lid on it. But Liz's periodic dreams, which jump off the page with their frankly offensive imagery and the polemic they clearly represent, are too infrequent and unsupported to do more than detract from the story.

McBride may well enter the Cosby/Dyson fray with this book. Liz's dreams are a bold statement by McBride, and he has a right to his opinion. But his need to make a statement marred his judgment as a novelist.

Former Minnesotan Cherie Parker works at Idle Time Books in Washington, D.C. She blogs at thelitlife.com.