WOW! What a gut-wrenching and utterly moving book! This one will definitely stay with me. I couldn't put it down, but it was hard to get through at times, simply because the subject is very heavy. I truly believe everyone should experience this book. It will leave you with your heart broken at what all the slaves had to go through, but it will also leave you with hope. Each page was so vividly written, it seemed to come to life. I couldn't wait to come home just to read a few more chapters! There were certain scenes that were very graphic (I'm looking at you, Chapter 28), but I truly do appreciate Johnson being able to strip down the scenes because these things really happened. Innocent people really had to suffer at the hands of another person. It didn't seem to matter that when they were being brutally whipped, they bleed the same color. All that mattered at the time was their exterior color.
Here's the synopsis:
"Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Dolores Brown has lived a sheltered life. Shielded by her mother's position as the estate's medicine woman and cherished by the Master's sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.
She'd been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has every known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil's Half Acre, a jail in Richmond, Virginia, where the enslaved are broken, tortured, and sold every day. There Pheby is exposed not just to her Jailer's cruelty, but also to his contradictions. To survive, Pheby will have to outwit him, even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice."
First off, I absolutely love that the author actually based the jail on a real jail in Richmond, Virginia that was known as the Devil's Half Acre. Johnson also paid homage to real slave ancestors by using plantation ledgers for the names in this novel. Now, let's get in to the novel itself.
Pheby did live a rather sheltered life and was very close to her mother. Unfortunately she had no way of knowing that the worst was yet to come. There were so many times I wished I could have gone through the book to save Pheby from experiencing the horrors that she experienced. She gets sold to the jail by the master's wife, who has always hated Pheby. There, she is exposed to the brutal conditions of slaves. Being a mulatto, she takes up with the Jailer. In the beginning, he seems nice enough, but that was only a facade for his true intentions. He basically turns Pheby into his "yellow wife" and puts her through, for lack of a better word, hell. The ending is completely heartbreaking, but there could have been no better ending for this book. I don't want to give much else away, as I do want others to experience it the way I did.
I also had the pleasure of reading this novel through Once Upon a Book Club. There were a few gifts that you get to open once you reach a certain page of the book, which brings it to life. I really did love all of the unique gifts and the way they correlated with the novel.
All in all, this is without a doubt one of my new favorites that I highly recommend everyone to read at least once!
Final rating: 5/5 stars
Until next time bookworms,
xoxococonutlatte
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