Of the four major genres of literature--poetry, drama, nonfiction and fiction--it is fiction upon which falls the mix blessing of “history.” David Covin willingly, deftly and brilliantly embraces this oxymoronic mantle in “Princes of the Road,” a novel which, like his “Brown Sky” and “Wimbey’s Corner,” builds on, even as it imaginatively reconstructs, myriad historical traditions within and without African-American and global experiences. As both central moment and metaphor, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters—with its memorably drawn lives, times and rhymes that hold us like a spell-- provides a thematic “arch.” Under it the novelist develops numerous sub-arches. And inside these, he ark-eye-textures a delightful, compelling, lovely-deadly, thrilling and suspenseful maze of parallels, paradoxes, intersections, socio-cultural layers, comic relief, comeuppances and reversals of missed fortune.

Under the sub-arch of geography Pullman trains and their “princely” porters meet the countryside, big cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles), small towns and the rural world. A geographical sub-sub-arch explores “nature”--natural, supernatural and man-woman’s (princes, would-be lovers, wives, prostitutes--all boiling in loneliness and desire). Other arches envelop and develop, yielding racial space, place and mind: racial flavors, racial attitudes and philosophies, racial psychology, racial hatred, enmity, killings and self-love. “Color,” and the stratification thereof, evolves--devolves or dissolves--in a “colored”/creole race’s effort to build a strong and self-supporting “Negro” world. Scenes of Afro-Judeo-Christian-Capitalist believers, successes and spillages abound. Vivid and electric are words for “Princes of the Road” as major players like porter-tenement owner Deacon Judge and porter-Pullman Company spy (and banker) Ezekiel James Jones get fleshed to the highest power. Supporting characters--be they porters Eliot Timbers (and his wife Phaedra) and Tantamount Stewart, a Sacramento prostitute named “Caramel,” or Atlanta/Harlem man-child Ofer Flagler--are reminiscent (in their roundness) of Charles Dickens’, Ralph Ellison’s and Toni Morrison’s. This omnisciently narrated novel, with its familistic thread (“brotherhood”) intertwining multi-concentric “plots” of ritual ground, ought to be read by all who cherish rich storytelling that is back- and fore-dropped by intricate webbings of history.

Eugene B. Redmond, Poet Laureate of East Saint Louis, Illinois & Founding Editor of Drumvoices Revue

I enjoyed this gripping novel which starts, like the fast trains of its subject, in flight. It then hurtles down to its bitter-sweet end without losing its grip on the reader’s attention. This story about the famous Pullman porters is its author’s gift to readers seeking to know all about the role the porters played in the African American experience; it also gives a more complex depiction of the role the company and its workers played during some of the most difficult years in American history, spanning the years of the First World War, the Depression, and the Second World War.

Princes of the Road is riveting in its presentation of the Pullman porter panorama. These important African American men triggered profound change in the experience of a segregated race. From servitude, they raised their status to a sustainable middle class through the education of their children and the pursuit of dreams formerly restricted from them. Of course, not all of them utilized the opportunities presented through the life-changing and consciousness-raising expeditions encapsulated in the speeding trains; some descended into deeper servitude through the bondage of the self, which manifested itself through corruption, betrayal, deception, infidelity, greed, alcoholism and moral decay. But most who realized the opportunity the road provided rose to a better status in society and sowed the seeds of a revolutionary spirit that preceded the 1960s’ civil rights agenda.

The novel also deals with family and the pursuit of the American dream. Living in very unfriendly conditions, the African Americans in the novel still lead their lives with unbending optimism, and even where they may fail as individuals, they are still bound by family. The porters travel all over the country, but they are kept strong by the unwavering support of their wives, whose strength keeps the family strong.

Steeped in history, Princes of the Road illuminates complexities and subtleties of an important era in America’s past. It is a captivating rendition of a powerful frontier of American literature.

I enjoyed it.