Description

A tour-de-force from three-time National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia, this is the story of an antebellum plantation--and the enduring legacies of slavery upon every person who lives there.

1860, Louisiana. After serving as mistress of Le Petit Cottage for more than six decades, Madame Sylvie Guilbert has decided, in spite of her family's objections, to sit for a portrait.

While Madame plots her last hurrah, stories come to light that span generations--from the big house to out in the fields--of routine horrors, secrets buried as deep as the family fortune, and the tangled bonds of descendants and enslaved.

This astonishing novel from award-winning author Rita Williams-Garcia about the interwoven lives of those bound to a plantation in antebellum America is an epic masterwork--empathetic, brutal, and entirely human.