by John Bailey
First published 2007
New Orleans, 1843. Sally Miller works as a slave in a cabaret, her past erased from memory. Then Madame Carl spots her on a street filled with gambling dens and recognizes the face of a German girl who vanished twenty-five years ago. Sally bears the birthmarks and resembles the mother Madame Carl remembers, but she has no recollection of any life before slavery. Her relatives launch a legal battle to prove Sally arrived from Germany as an indentured servant, not born into bondage. Her master fights back, insisting she carries African blood and belongs to him forever. The case splits New Orleans as lawyers clash over Sally's true identity. Witnesses emerge from the shadows of the Spanish Quarter. Evidence surfaces and disappears. Sally stands at the center of it all, a young woman whose freedom depends on memories she cannot access and a past that others must prove for her.
Genres: historical-fiction, mystery, 19th-century, african-american-historical-fiction
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New Orleans, Germany, Spanish Quarter
Period: 1843
292 pages · Kindle Edition · Grove Press
Content warnings: slavery