Book Description
In 1860 Julia Henderson made her will directing that her slave Rose not be sold like a brute beast, a feeble attempt to atone for the shame she bore for letting tragedy come to Rose’s family, sin she would carry to her grave. Julia then decided to keep a memory journal, beginning with childhood when she woke one morning to find her father sobbing, her dead mother cradles in his arms. A slave, with cheerful little Rose in tow, wa moved into their home to care for Julia and the brothers. Julia was charmed by Rose, and their half century of near sisterhood began.
Rose also began to write a journal, as a child she had learned to write in Julia’s “play school.” The novel unfolds in the form of those interwoven journals, relating many of their shared experiences, nuanced differently by each writer. Julia adores Rose, abhors salvery, but is oblivious to her own biases. Rose returns Julia’s affection with reservations; she detests being property, and having no say-so over her life. The gnarly hands of slavery encumbered them both.
The journals, each in its writer’s distinctive voice, tell of childhood, marriages, raising children, family separations, and deaths of loved ones. They write about the people in their lives, endearing characters, quirky ones, and some who were purely mean. And how they became tightly bound by childbirths and illness, those special intimacies reserved for women; an how other events devastated Rose, shamed Julia, and nearly broke the trust between them.
About the Author
Ann Williams was immersed in regional history for over thirty years. She had a particular interest in antebellum plantation life, and the families, black and white, who worked those plantations. She used a variety of sources to study slave life, especially books and papers written by slaves or former slaves. She wrote detailed accounts for local historic sites, where, along with her husband, Jim, she volunteered as docent and first person interpreter. Ann and Jim died in 2021
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