Wench

I wish I could give this three and a half stars. This book began with a great idea, but failed to fully explore the situation. The book is about four slave "wenches" who are taken by their masters to Tawawa, a vacation resort in Ohio. At Tawawa, they are able to forge friendships with women who aren't on their plantation, a white farmwife who visits the resort frequently and free blacks. The central character is Lizzie, who is with a "good" master who has fathered her two children and she considers the man that she loves. As such, her feelings are the most confused about what it means to be free and a slave and what she risks by risking freedom. Tawawa is a real place and there is rich history to be mined here, but I wished for more backstory on the three central women and more depth and introspection from the characters. ( )

This book had such a good premise. I went into it with a lot of promise and hope - only to be vastly disappointed. The characters are far too shallow, the plots and characters left unexplored, and an ending far too mystical for the tone of the book. ( )

First novels, even if they do not entirely succeed, should be ambitious. They should (perhaps) tackle huge themes, involve great moral struggles, create intimate character portraits, and they should have heart. Dolen Perkins-Valdez’ first novel certainly takes on a huge theme in slavery. She focuses on the tangled web of allegiances and betrayals that arise when master-slave relations are sexualized and, more especially, when then they bear fruit in the form of children. She introduces us to four black slave women brought together over a number of summers at the Tawawa resort in “free” Ohio, where their masters have gone to “take the waters”. Mawu, Sweet, Reenie, and Lizzie have varied histories and divergent futures. The tale of any one of them would be enough to melt the coldest heart. So, if the novel does not entirely succeed, it can at least be seen to be headed in the right direction.

Told from the perspective of Lizzie, whose situation is complicated by her “love” for her master and the father of the her two children, the few succeeding summers at the resort lead to tragedy and, at least for some, new beginnings. The Tawara resort (which did in fact exist) thrusts these slave mistresses into close proximity with freed and freeborn blacks. Is it any wonder they feel both the pull toward freedom and the future, as well as the call of kith and kin further south?

Lizzie can read and write, modestly. But her curious state, as both a willing and unwilling participant in her own subjugation, makes her a not entirely trustworthy perceiver of events. Her vision, both moral and emotional, is clouded. Enough so that she willingly reports on Mawu’s plans to escape, all the while believing that she does so for Mawu’s own good despite knowing the severe beating Mawu will suffer at the hands of her master as a result. Is she any better judge of her own situation? It makes it difficult to fully sympathize with Lizzie’s own plight. And it also tempers our enthusiasm for her later re-visioning because it too may not have a solid base.

The writing here is at times uneven. It is almost as though, with such richness before her, Perkins-Valdez sometimes cannot decide what to focus on. That is not such a bad problem for a first novel. If her reach has exceeded her grasp, well…that’s why they invented second novels. ( )

This book was published in Trade Paperback after The Help came out....I really feel in love with the charactors and I hope there will be a sequel. I wan the know what happens. I can see them all in my mind and know who I would want to hug and who I would like to kick in the B----s. Movie or sequel or both. While an admitted work of fiction, the stories ring true. 'It is documented by historians that Southern slaveholders frequented the resort with slave entourages, as part of oral History.' Take time to read this if you want to meet the strongest women you have ever known. ( )

The lives of slave women and their masters. How daily life was lived and their reactions to it. ( )