First published 2004
Manon Gaudet sits in the stifling heat of her husband's Louisiana sugar plantation, dreaming of the bustling streets of New Orleans where she grew up. Her marriage brought her only isolation and misery in the Louisiana countryside of the early 1800s. The source of her deepest humiliation lives right under her roof. Sarah, a young slave woman, was given to Manon as a wedding gift from her aunt. Sarah's son Walter serves as daily proof of Manon's husband's betrayal, his mixed race features revealing the master's true desires. Manon watches Sarah move through the house, caring for the child who represents everything wrong with Manon's life. Outside their domestic prison, slave revolts simmer across the region. The political upheaval mirrors the personal chaos inside the plantation house, where three people remain locked in a triangle of power, resentment, and survival. Martin places readers directly into the claustrophobic world of the antebellum South, where freedom means different things to different people, and where the most intimate relationships carry the weight of an entire brutal system.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: power-dynamics, triangle
Setting: Louisiana, New Orleans
Period: Early 1800s
Audiobook · Orion (An Imprint of the Orion
Content warnings: slavery