A forthcoming historical novel of great promise

 As readers of this blog may know, I'm not a fan of novel excerpts in publications - as a rule - but once in a while there are excerpts worth reading on their own and that truly service as an intro to a forthcoming novel that might have been overlooked. No chance of that last happening to Elena Ferrante's latest, excerpted at length recently in the NYTimes - a strong enough selection to make this onto my wanna-read list (despite tepid review in the New Yorker - can't have everything). But the New Yorker fiction piece this week is from an author unknown to me and I expect to many - David Wright Falade - and the piece, which I am sure will be part of his novel (Nigh on a Brother, acc to the NYer "contributors" notes) in 2022, The Sand Banks, 1861, looks like it might be a significant debut novel - w/ possibility of literary and commercial success; it reminded me a little of The Known World and the more recent George Washington Black, in that it's fiction in a historical setting, obviously - the onset of the Civil War - as experienced in a small community on the Va. coast. The central figure is a young man serving as a slave to the largest local landowner, who is also his father; Falade does a good job establishing this character and his sense of exploitation and isolation at a key moment in his life and in his times. He and others on this coastal island are just receiving word that the Union forces have entered Va., and this young man summons the courage to announce to his father/"owner" that he plans to run away to join the Union forces, or at least to support them through some kind of menial labor. And thus the plot is set in motion - which I imagine will lead to many adventures and encounters. I'm not sure how well this movement, slaves running not to freedom but to service in or for the Union armies, this work from this early look gives promise of being topical, informative, and dramatic, and though I'm no devotee of historical fiction I'm looking forward to the eventual publication of Falade's work.