Historical Fiction -Wench

 

                                                        Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

 

 

 

 

The story is about four slave women. Three of them have known each other for years, Lizzie, Sweet and Reenie. The other lady, Mawu was a new comer to their group. They all were mistresses to their masters. Every summer they would go to Ohio, which was a free state at the time, and stayed at Tawawa House Resort. Lizzie, Sweet and Reenie had been visiting the resort with their masters for the last four summers and were comfortable with their current situation. This was Mawu first summer and she strongly disliked her extremely mean master and wanted to escape into freedom. It didn’t take Mawu long before she began to talk about escaping to the other ladies. The other ladies were too afraid to even contemplate the idea. They knew that if they were to get caught attempting to escape, there would be extreme consequences that they would have to face like being beaten, sold to horribly mean masters and possibly even killed. They all still had families that they had to consider. When back on the plantation their lives were made just a little easier also. Mawu, yes had the chance to enjoy time at the resort but her master was very mean and life was not as comfortable for her as the other ladies. So, she was very determined to escape and to attempt to convince the other ladies to come with.

On the other side of the resort there was another resort which was for free blacks to stay. Mawu would sneak over there from time to time. During her visits she met some people that were willing to help her get her freedom. They gave her information and a map that lead to different safe houses and abolitionist that would be willing to help her. She tells the other women about the information she received and tried unsuccessfully to convince them to go with her. Lizzie, being naïve thought that she would be helping Mawu by telling her master of Mawu plans to escape. Well, the totally opposite occurred. Mawu was beaten, sodomized, and left bleeding perfidiously and unconscious. Everyone knew that Lizzie had told therefore no one especially Mawu trusted Lizzie anymore.

After Mawu recovered, it was still in her heart to be free. Another summer, and the ladies are back at the resort with their masters, including Mawu. Mawu has now met a white women and her husband which are both abolitionist. She began sneaking off and spending a lot of time with them. Lizzie get a chance to meet Glory and she gives her information so that she could read to the other slaves that could not read. With her doing this she rebuilt all the lost trust they had for her. The ladies began to think about freedom more and more. Sweet, which was pregnant lost her baby and while grieving her baby was also informed that all of her other children died back on the plantation from a cholera outbreak.  She was not strong enough to survive the heart break, she died of depression and heart break. This convinced the other ladies including Lizzie that it was time to escape.  And the story continues …………….Will they actually escape?

The author captured my heart with this story. I have read several stories about slavery fiction and non-fiction but this is a must read. The story made me cry and laugh. It made my heart heavy to read about these ladies and it also fill my heart with joy to know that through it all they had strong determination. That inspired me a great deal.

This book was actually suggested to me by the reference librarian at the library I work at. I told her I wanted to read in a different genre from my norm and I chose Historical Fiction. I thought this would be a challenge to read. It started of slow but became a book I didn’t want to put down.