"In O. H. Bennett's affecting first novel, 9-year-old Kenneth Willis's mother abandons his father, an Army officer, in Germany and heads back, kids in tow, to her ancestral home in Kentucky it's a place where the boy's grandmother, Ruth, tends an ancient cemetery known as the "colored garden." The garden functions as a kind of repository for the harsh history of slavery and sharecropping on the former tobacco plantation where the family still lives. Kenneth, who is known as Sarge, is brand new to America, and he begins his racial education by listening to his grandmother's tales of people like Cakes Huntley, the son of a slave and a slave owner, who was the color of a "fried corn cake." Cakes dared to dream of becoming a "gentleman" and was whipped mercilessly by his biological father for his presumption. The most important story lies under a stone cherub with the mysterious inscription: "Kate: Born and Died the Same Week. 1931. 'Budded on Earth to Blossom in Heaven.' " it's the one tale that Sarge's grandmother doesn't want to share. This novel shows how the hidden history of a family, once unearthed, can forever change a person's view of himself and his relatives. In the end, Sarge learns 'more than even my youthful curiosity wanted to know.' "

-JEFF WAGGONER 6/25/00 New York Times Book Review 

Coming Of age tale that works, September 7, 2000, Amazon.com
Reviewer: Harriet Klausner 

After living in Germany as the son of a military officer, Sarge watches the break-up of the marriage between his parents. His father remains overseas while his mother returns to Kentucky where Sarge's maternal grandmother, Ruth still owns a farm.

On the former tobacco plantation lays an old slave cemetery that Ruth tenderly cares for as if it is her own special garden. For several generations, slaves were buried in the cemetery. Ruth begins to tell Sarge the stories behind each graveside. However, Ruth is either unable to or refuses to tell Sarge the story behind one particular stone that marks the birth and death of baby Kate. Sarge who has handled his parents' separation rather poorly turns to the deceased slaves for solace. He needs to know the story of Kate if he is to get past the pending divorce. As Sarge seeks the truth, he concludes that some secrets are better off buried.

THE COLORED GARDEN is a tremendous but different type of coming of age tale that will thrill readers who relish their fiction to contain something entertaining yet different. The story line centers on the stunned Sarge as he listens with earnest to the tales about the dead slaves while seeking something new to believe in. Oscar H. Bennett has written a winner that digs deep into the essence of human nature in an articulate and intelligent novel that is worth reading.

“…Bennett carries on the African American oral tradition in fine fashion…a lovely literary debut, and Bennett is a writer to watch."

- Library Journal 3/15/00

"When his parents split up, Sarge moves with his mother and older sister to his grandparents' farm in Kentucky. After living in Germany, where his father is posted, Sarge finds down-home country life strange and the neighboring hillbillies even more so. Sarge's grandmother Ruth helps him gain a connection to the place when she asks him to help her tend the garden. The garden is really an ancient slave cemetery, and Ruth knows stories for everyone buried there-except one. The mystery of who baby "Kate" is leads Sarge on a surprising hunt into the past, with devastating and illuminating consequences. Ruth's stories will come alive for readers, as they do for Sarge. Bennett's first novel is beautiful and real; impossible to put down until the final page."  

-Ellie Barta-Moran 2/15/00 BOOKLIST

"The Colored Garden is a fascinating novel about storytellers: a boy called Sarge and his grandmother Ruth, whose farm Sarge visits in the wake of his parents' separation. On the farm is an old slave cemetery that Ruth tends as a beautiful flower garden. As Sarge struggles to understand his parents' impending divorce, Grandmother Ruth begins to tell him adventures of the dead slaves. These spirits become heroes to the boy during this pivotal summer in his life, and the faith he once had in his parents is transferred to them. Listening to Ruth and observing the behavior of the adults around him, Sarge learns that some secrets we keep, while others keep us. The Colored Garden is a highly recommended, original story, in which the author compellingly explores the human condition, past and present in a lyrical, engaging narrative."

"The Colored Garden" is a garden of stories, a novel whose most dominant theme is stories, and how the telling of them binds people together, not just IN time, but across time, across the chasm of the grave. Its young protagonist, Sarge, is as fully realized a creation as I know of in recent American fiction, and his struggle with the collapsing world of his present mirrors our own struggles, our own search for lasting value, and for love. It's no secret, requires no revelation, to discover that our greatest source of strength is in our collective past, in the knowledge of those lived lives--yet O.H. Bennett's brilliant first novel strikes into the heart with exactly the force of revelation. It is wonderful writing; a wonderful debut.

It is not often that a novel leaves the reader with a sense of cultural understanding. But The Colored Garden does just that. It shows a way to look on the American past not simply as a time of suffering or hardship but also as a time of celebration for a noble legacy.

     --Ana Falco, Book reviewer for Alakazam