Review: The Final Departure by Epp Marsh III

Partially based on real history, The Final Departure by Epp Marsh III tells an alternate history where Marcus Garvey’s Greater Liberia Act is put into widespread effect. In 1929, Civil Rights pioneer Marcus Garvey strikes a devil’s bargain with the Ku Klux Klan to turn the United States into an all-white nation. Congress enacts the Greater Liberia Act, arranging passage for every black American to Africa, while leaving unprotected any black citizen who choose to stay behind.

The novel tells the story of Ruth Gaines who remains in the U.S. with her true love Lance Wainwright, the eldest son of a white Birmingham steel magnate, after the majority chose to leave the country. Ruth and Lance endure hellish violence from white Southerners, as virulent racists torture, rape, and murder as they seek to exterminate those who remained in America. The wealthy Wainwright family vows to protect Ruth when her own family sails to Africa, prompting racists to turn the hatred on the white family as well.

A powerful work of alternate history, The Final Departure rips apart racist America in a story that is reflected in real American history – as the Greater Liberia Act was indeed proposed – while also being woefully timely. In the world of this novel, racists proudly display their bigotry, and with little consequence. However, like other dark dystopian novels, the evil percolating through the book leaves its venom in both hero and villain. In this scenario, no one is left unscathed.

Confronting American racism by envisioning a purge of black people is a bold premise, and one in which Marsh mostly succeeds. Alternate histories – from Roth’s The Plot Against America to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle or even Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – demand strong characters who offer contrast with what actually happened. Marsh is uneven on this point, giving us full pictures of some characters but stereotypes of others, but overall this contentious premise is handled sensitively and intelligently.

Marsh employs first-person narration and allows different characters to tell the story. This device sometimes knocks the story off track but does offer insight into each character, which in turn elevates the immediacy of the violence inflicted on black Americans and their protectors. The novel is maddening its depiction of man’s inhumanity to man, but that is a testament to Marsh’s writing, which manages to be both visceral and subtle. The prose is sometimes a bit too message-laden, but it’s an effective novel overall – both in the story of a romance in the face of tragedy, and in its unabashed attempt to force America to confront the nation’s original sin of slavery.

In the end, Marsh’s unflinching look at racism, especially as practiced by Southerners, can give the reader a new appreciation for the struggles of the past that in many ways are still with us – as well as the important necessity for compromise and cooperation. Every attempt at de-escalation of polarization fails, which is something that could most certainly apply today, so as with all good alternate histories, it’s telling a deeper story about the present day.

All told, The Final Departure is a moving and important work of alternate history that tells a story not just about a possible past, but about the present and even the future, if we are unable to address past injustice.