SOURCE: "A Piece of the Past," in The Women's Review of Books, Vol. XI, No. 12, September, 1994, p. 25.

[Gomez is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. In the following, she provides a thematic discussion of The Serpent's Gift, lauding Lee's focus on African-American history, the past, family, and personal relationships.]

"This all reminds me," says LaRue Smalls towards the end of The Serpent's Gift, "of a story I need to tell you. It's the history of the world, from the beginning to the present." At some point in Helen Elaine Lee's first novel it becomes clear that this is indeed what she herself is doing: she's sliced us a thick wedge of history. The story begins with a young mother fleeing the violence of a drunken husband in Detroit after the turn of the century, and ends two generations later. The layers of life—birth, anxiety, triumph, love, death...