Wench - Hardcover

Perkins-Valdez, Dolen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006170654X ISBN 13: 9780061706547

Publisher: Amistad Pr, 2010

Synopsis

Slave mistresses Lizzie, Reenie and Sweet travel to a resort in Ohio each year with their white masters, until Mawu shows up and encourages the three others to escape, forcing them to choose between freedom and leaving their friends and families--and the emotional and psychological ties that bind them to their masters. A first novel. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"[E]lectrifying. . . . [T]his remarkable novel skillfully dramatizes a dark chapter in American history. Writing with lyrical grace and a gift for plot development, Perkins-Valdez has produced an inspiring portrait of four brave women and the risks they take to change their lives."--BookPage

"[A] fascinating and tragic story. . . . [A] compulsive read."--NPR.org, Book Club Pick

"[A] memorable and engaging debut."--Library Journal, Best Books of 2010

"A heartbreaker, full of understated tragedy and lyrical prose. . . . Perkins-Valdez has woven a devastatingly beautiful account of a cruel past."--People

"Perkins-Valdez manages to shed a poetic light on one of the ugliest chapters in American history."--Essence

"Readers entranced by The Help will be equally riveted by Wench. A deeply moving, beautifully written novel told from the heart."--USA Today

"A fabulously creative and daring historical novel ."--Dawn Turner Trice, Chicago Tribune

"Perkins-Valdez memorably portrays how the entwined destinies of chattel and master, increasingly related by blood, passion and hatred, prefigure the looming national conflict. This is an almost forgotten, but important, chapter in American history--recorded as fiction but nonetheless full of hard facts."--Town & Country

"A mesmerizing read."--Seattle Times

"Absolutely phenomenal. . . . Wench is an excellent novel that will appeal to many readers. Debut author Dolen Perkins-Valdez has crafted a historical narrative that shouldn't be missed."--Sacramento Book Review

From the Back Cover:

An ambitious and startling debut novel that follows the lives of four women at a resort popular among slaveholders who bring their enslaved mistresses

wench \'wench\ n. from Middle English "wenchel," 1 a: a girl, maid, young woman; a female child.

Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. It's their open secret.

Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet are regulars at Tawawa House. They have become friends over the years as they reunite and share developments in their own lives and on their respective plantations. They don't bother too much with questions of freedom, though the resort is situated in free territory–but when truth-telling Mawu comes to the resort and starts talking of running away, things change.

To run is to leave behind everything these women value most–friends and families still down South–and for some it also means escaping from the emotional and psychological bonds that bind them to their masters. When a fire on the resort sets off a string of tragedies, the women of Tawawa House soon learn that triumph and dehumanization are inseparable and that love exists even in the most inhuman, brutal of circumstances–all while they are bearing witness to the end of an era.

An engaging, page-turning, and wholly original novel, Wench explores, with an unflinching eye, the moral complexities of slavery.

About this edition

• Publisher: Amistad Pr
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 006170654X
• ISBN 13: 9780061706547
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 293