In Print

Seven years ago, Lalita Tademy’s friends were wondering if she had taken leave of her senses. One of the highest-paid African-American women in Silicon Valley, she had walked away from an executive position with Sun Microsystems to attempt something she had never done: write a book.

It seemed like a colossal gamble, yet it paid off handsomely. Tademy’s book, Cane River (Warner Paperback, $13.95), was the kind of out-of-nowhere manuscript that publishers dream about, and the unknown author received a staggering $500,000 advance.

Though written as a novel, Cane River is based on the real lives of four strong-willed women in Tademy’s family tree, two of whom were born into slavery. As a child, she had heard many tales about her beautiful great-grandmother, Emily Fredieu, who had died in 1936, and often wondered about the women who had preceded her. After quitting her high-tech job, Tademy spent three years researching her family genealogy, wading through endless church and courthouse records in Louisiana. As the story gradually took shape, she found her way to a  plantation near the Cane River, where the dramatic story of her ancestors’ fight to survive slavery and post-Civil War poverty finally came together.

Read the entire article in the April 2002 issue