Healing, haints and Hoodoo, slavery, secrets, love and legacies.
The ending, though surprising, was just about perfect. Definitely will go on my favorites shelf, and it will take a strong contender to displace this for my favorite of the year. So many things happen in this book, the details, descriptions are incredible, all serve to make this a compulsive read. Their lives during slavery was often beyond terrible and after, the freedom they have still enactes a high cost. War, the slaves stay on at the plantation, now ownerless, and their lives take many twists and turns. The story follows a slave conjuring woman and her daughter Rue, which is also my granddaughters name) and the last mistress of the house Verita. What makes this book so special is that I didn't feel like an observer but was drawn into the story, feeling as if I were a part of what was going to happen. The book covers the period before the Civil War and after. With nary a misstep in plot, tone or character develop, Atakora takes us to a slave holding plantation in the South. This is another book that I would place in that class, another never to be forgotten story. Many years back I read a book, The Healing, that made a huge impression and a book I have never forgotten. My first five star book of the year and a first novel to boot.
Magnificently written, brilliantly researched, richly imagined, Conjure Women moves back and forth in time to tell the haunting story of Rue, Varina, and May Belle, their passions and friendships, and the lengths they will go to save themselves and those they love. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother's footsteps as a midwife and their master's daughter Varina.
A mother and daughter with a shared talent for healing-and for the conjuring of curses-are at the heart of this dazzling first novelĬonjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life.
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