Decked out in full cowboy gear and oozing self-confidence from every pore, Rose cuts a diminutive, but heroic figure in Nelson’s big, broad Western scenes. Shortly after being born one stormy night, Rose thanks her parents, picks a name, and gathers lightning into a ball-all of which is only a harbinger of feats to come.

Nolen and Nelson offer a smaller, but no less gifted counterpart to Big Jabe (2000) in this new tall tale. It’s a tale that will have a profound effect. His feet moved like tail feathers and he sailed beyond the clouds, way up and over everything.” Despite Deboreaux’s threats to sell her down the river if she doesn’t keep silent, she returns to tell the story, both before and after she escapes to freedom with her children. Young Jane trails the furious slave-owner and his dogs out into the fields, where she sees all five rise into the air “like climbing a ladder.” The last, “the one who had smiled at my great-grandmama’s mama, Jane…kept treading air with arms like wings.

The five serene new arrivals at Ol’ Man Deboreaux’s plantation, just off the boat from Africa, barely speak a word, keep to themselves-and, when the first evening’s meal is over, vanish. The small, enigmatic figures in Daly’s folk-style landscape paintings add to the air of mystery infusing this spare rendition of “The People Could Fly,” retold here in a version handed down from storyteller McGill’s slave-born ancestor.

Miles' Song by Alice McGill