When Lavinia’s ship arrives arrives in America, there are two things that the ship’s captain knows about her. One, her parents have died on the journey over, so she’s an orphan. And two, she is white. What else can a captain do with a seven year old white orphan except put her in his kitchen house and make her an indentured servant? In antebellum Virginia, that’s about as good as Lavinia can get. So, this little white girl grows up among the slaves, cared for by Belle, the cook, who has secrets of her own. Life at Tall Oaks is both “black and white” and incredibly complicated. As Lavinia slowly begins to understand the relationships between owner and slave she cannot reconcile how loved and adored she is by her slave “family “and the way that they are treated on the plantation. How can Lavinia make a place for herself in this world?
With a strong and vivid cast of characters, I fell for this book hook line and sinker. The audiobook is a superb production, I truly felt immersed in this pre-Civil War plantation environment. There is so much pain. So so much pain in this book that I keep wondering what it is that is making me need to give it five stars. I think it is the people. It is their relationships and their resilience in the face of horror. It’s how I felt about them when they were hurting. It was the juxtaposition of those people completely enamored by the power and hatred of their slave-owning society against those who quietly and subtly worked against it. Some parts of the story went on a tiny bit long for me and sometimes I wanted to shake Lavinia for her choices but as I look back at my own life, especially when I was young, the things we do for the people we love do not always make a lot of sense. And in this period, in this place, the consequences for rash decisions could be so far reaching and so harsh, despite how completely irrational it may be. There is just a LOT to think about in this book and I do recommend it to those to are okay with darker subject material.
trigger warning: there is a lot of rape in this book - never graphic at all but you know that it's happening
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