Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award!
7 starred reviews! ""Monumental."" --Booklist (starred review) * ""A marathon masterpiece.""--Kirkus (starred review) * ""Necessary.""--SLJ (starred review) * ""Shocking and dramatic.""--Shelf Awareness (starred review) * ""Mesmerizing, confounding and vividly rendered.""--Book Page (starred review) * ""Williams-Garcia's storytelling is magnificent; her voice honest and authentic.""--Horn Book (starred review)
This astonishing novel from three-time National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia about the interwoven lives of those bound to a plantation in antebellum America is an epic masterwork--empathetic, brutal, and entirely human--and essential reading for both teens and adults grappling with the long history of American racism.
1860, Louisiana. After serving as mistress of Le Petit Cottage for more than six decades, Madame Sylvie Guilbert has decided, in spite of her family's objections, to sit for a portrait.
While Madame plots her last hurrah, stories that span generations--from the big house to out in the fields--of routine horrors, secrets buried as deep as the family fortune, and the tangled bonds of descendants and enslaved, come to light to reveal a true portrait of the Guilberts.
Rita Williams-Garcia is one of the preeminent authors of our time. She has been honored with the Children's Literature Lecture Award from the American Library Association.
About the Author :
Rita Williams-Garcia's Newbery Honor Book, One Crazy Summer, was a winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, a National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. The two sequels, P.S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama, were both Coretta Scott King Author Award winners and ALA Notable Children's Books. She is also the author of the NAACP Image Award-winning and National Book Award finalist Clayton Byrd Goes Underground; A Sitting in St. James, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner and Los Angeles Times Book Award winner; Like Sisters on the Homefront, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book; Blue Tights; and four ALA Best Books for Young Adults: Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; No Laughter Here; Every Time a Rainbow Dies, a Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book; and Fast Talk on a Slow Track. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, New York, with her husband and has two adult daughters. You can visit her online at ritawg.com.
Machelle Williams has crafted an easy storytelling style from twenty-three years as a corporate trainer and keynote diversity speaker. Since 2016 she has successfully produced over twenty-eight audiobook projects. Machelle's voice is nuanced, ranging from soft and soothing to dramatic and smoky. She specializes in mysteries and thrillers; her bespoke repertoire also includes cozy mysteries and nonfiction, as well as titles in the religious, urban, and noire genres. When you need a narrator to take your listener to the edge of their seat and their breath away, trust the telling to Machelle.
Review :
"[A] sweeping, richly researched, and powerfully delivered tale of privilege and exploitation...Williams-Garcia's storytelling is magnificent."
-- "Horn Book (starred review)"
"A mesmerizing, confounding, and vividly rendered portrait of the thoroughly putrid institution of slavery in antebellum Louisiana."
-- "BookPage (starred review)"
"Depicts the brutality and inhumanity of slavery...[a] shocking and dramatic novel."
-- "Shelf Awareness (starred review)"
"Equal parts history and tantalizing, chaotic drama...a fresh and nuanced approach to the tale of American slavery."
-- "Booklist (starred review)"
"Machelle Williams skillfully...makes clear the intricate language switching common to Creole Louisiana among both enslavers and the enslaved. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award."
-- "AudioFile"
"This is a wonderful character-driven novel as stories of the enslaved and the slaveowners are simultaneously told."
-- "School Library Journal (starred review)"
"This story broadens and emboldens interrogations of US chattel slavery."
-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
