Awful book, did not finish it. ( )

This basically was a study of 4 generations of women from 1 family and excepting for the last character they could have been inbred for all their craziness and evil intent toward each other. Strange but fascinating read. Rip, the black house help was the big redeeming quality in this book. ( )

The trashiest novel I've read in a long, long time. I got pretty tired of watching the main character relentlessly manipulate everyone in her life, all of whom are portrayed as too dumb to catch on. Parts of the plot are outrageously unbelievable. ( )

Siddon's southern sagas are often riddled with mental illness boiling just below the surface and this is no exception. We meet Ruth Yancy as a child, living in poverty and the daughter of a crazed street preacher and a mother who has, in her own mind, elevated herself far beyond her social status. Her mother's mantras of how to deal with men and a society that has suppressed her leave more than a lasting impression on this oldest daughter. When Ruth is brought to the southern estate Fox's Earth as a child to be "adopted" by the wealthy family who owns it, she quickly learns to manipulate those around her. Her madness makes her the matriarch of Fox's Earth at a young age and through deception linked with her madness, she changes the fates of all those around her. An engrossing read. ( )

For the most part, Siddons writes about an American south not populated by Black peop[e. This book is perhaps an attempt to address that, but it doesn't quite come off. ( )