Conjure Women by Afia Atakora

genre: magical realism, historical fiction

Rue isn’t a slave any longer, not technically, since the War is over, but her childhood was spent at the side of her enslaved mama Miss May Belle who healed and midwifed on the plantation where she and Rue lived.   Having learned from Miss May, Rue’s role as a healer and “conjure” woman has put her at dark bedsides and quiet vigils and she learned early which secrets needed to stay kept.  When a strange child is born that the village fears, Rue’s own secrets threaten to slip out of her grasp.

Atakora has dug into the complicated and traumatic life of women on a plantation before, during and after the Civil War. The narrative skips around in time a lot, which required a bit of piecing things together, but always there are women - strong because they have no choice, finding moments to love but with the contestant knowledge that it can all be ripped away in an instant, the physicality required to carry a chid, to birth it and then keep it alive. It was very slow going for me, I had to keep forcing myself to pick it up until I was about 2/3 of the way through - but I cared enough to want to finish it despite its dark nature.

The relationships in Conjure Women are complicated as so rarely are individuals actually allowed to choose the life they lead - between the horrors of slavery and the downright hell of just being a woman in the first place, no one ever seems to get what they actually need to lead an emotionally healthy life. So it’s a tragic and hard story but one that reels you in with the hope that maybe Rue or really, any one at all, will get the peace and rest they deserve.