REVIEWS

Riding the Rails is a riveting document of hope and  hardship during one of this nation's bleakest eras. For all  that has been written about the Depression, the travails  of those under the age of 18 have been sorely  underrepresented. Gripping and well-researched, the reader can all but hear the cadence of the trains and lonesome wail at every whistle-stop.

-- Boston Globe

"Riding the Rails sets out to tell about the 250,000 teenagers who hopped freights and lived the hobo life in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash...Uys paints a brisk, colorful, fast-paced portrait of lean times and high hopes."

                 -- Tulsa World

"With more than 500 interviews and stunning archival photographs, Uys thoroughly recreates the wretched conditions the boxcar boys and girls endured."

                 -- Chicago Tribune

"One of the most poignant memories of the wandering youth of the Great Depression."

                --   Sacramento Bee

"As gripping as it is well-researched."

                --   Denver Post

"A remarkable story"

               --    Kansas City Star

"An elegantly presented and quietly moving  collection of firsthand reminiscences, capturing a unique  moment in American history. Enthusiastically  recommended for all public libraries."

               --    Library Journal

" Whether you're a "gaycat" (novice rider) or a "dingbat"  (seasoned hobo), Riding the Rails is entertaining and  inspiring, recapturing a time when the country was  "dying by inches."                --   Sunny Delaney, History Editor

                        Amazon.com                               

A masterpiece! Brazil has the look and feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new   and original world for the reader-explorer to discover.

                           

                     -- L'Express, Paris

Pulsing with vigor, this is a vast novel to tell the story of a vast country. Uys depicts Brazil's evolution from colony to empire to republic. Lacing the tale together are two families: the Cavalcantis, planters and slave owners; and representing another fundamental social stream, the da Silvas, prospectors, adventurers, seekers of El Dorado.

The principal characters, both real and imaginary are hard to forget. Among them: the great Indian warrior, Aruãna; Secundus Proot, a Dutch artist who wanders into the interior to paint Indians; Black Peter, a freed African slave who takes murderous revenge on his persecutors; Francisco Solano Lôpez, doomed and gallant president of Paraguay; Anthony the Counselor, visionary rebel.

Uys re-creates history almost entirely "at ground level," even more densely than Michener, through the eyes and actions of an awesome cast of characters.-- Publishers Weekly

Uys has accomplished what no Brazilian author from José de Alencar to Jorge Amado was able to do. He is the first to write our national epic in all its decisive episodes, from the indigenous civilization and the El Dorado myth, everything converging like the segments of a rose window to that reborn and metamorphosed myth that is Brasilia. He is the first outsider to see us with total honesty and sympathy and full empathy with the decisive moments in our history and their spiritual meaning. Descriptions like those of the war with Paraguay are unsurpassed in our literature and evoke the great passages of War and Peace

 

                                                 -- Wilson Martins, Jornal do Brasil (click to read review)

Uys has interwoven five centuries of Brazilian history and generations of two fictional families into a massive, richly detailed novel, Michenerian in sweep and scope, informative and intriguing. Whether recounting grisly rituals in which captives of the Tupiniquin are prepared for slaughter (and subsequent consumption), the ill-fated albeit heroic effort of Padre Inácio Cavalcanti to convert the Tupiniquin to Christianity, or the fanciful expeditions of Amador Flores da Silva as he searches for emeralds, Uys has a sense of pace and an eye for detail that rarely fail him. -- Washington Post

No one before knew how to bring to life Brazil and her history. Uys's characters are brilliant and colorful, combining elements of the best swashbuckler with those worthy of deepest reflection. Most stunning is that it took a South African, now a naturalized American, to evoke so perfectly the grand but interrupted dream that is Brazil.

 -- Le Figaro, Paris

Uys smoothly interweaves a series of self-contained episodes into a sprawling saga that spans five centuries. The richness and authenticity of the setting and the historical detail make the investment in this lavish drama eminently worthwhile.-- Booklist

This is not a caricature of Brazil, a country of endless carnival and happy samba dancers. Brazil offers a painless introduction to a country and people whose development has a sweep and drama similar to our own. One of Mr. Uys's characters stands out above all the others: Amador Flores da Silva, a fictional creation intended to embody the virtues and many vices of the bandeirantes, the semi-savage "flag bearing" pioneers who opened up the Brazilian interior to "civilization." Flores da Silva is a complicated figure, ashamed of his mixed Indian and Portuguese background, driven by an insatiable curiosity and possessing a tenacity that enables him to survive one adversity after another. He is a man capable of hunting down a close companion with whom he spent years fighting Indians in the Amazon and also ordering the execution of his own son for disobedience on an expedition, but his overwhelming vitality makes him compelling and even sympathetic on occasion.-- New York Times Book Review

Brazil is a family epic written in a lucid, flowing style. A saga both simple and direct, yet deeply evocative and dramatic throughout.

A reader is left with the wish that there were a thousand pages more

                                   -- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Dynamic, excellently researched, free from the eternal stereotypes about Brazil.-- Estado do São Paulo

Uys's unsentimentalized chronicle combines great adventure with an impressive level of research. His intermingling of real historical figures with the fictional Cavalcantis and da Silvas create an aura of verisimilitude that makes history come alive. The epic history of Brazil has been accorded its due in this panoramic novel.-- Magill Book Reviews

The reader is entranced from the moment he is introduced to the young cannibal Aruanã until the story ends with Amilcar da Silva gazing from a Brasilia skyscraper at the vast sertão, the heart of the country that was unconquerable for nearly five centuries. The writing skill of Uys is evident in the way he has taken graphic stories from periods of Brazil's history and developed them into a balanced novel that equals any of the epics of James A Michener.-- Nashville Banner

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