![]() ![]() ![]() As Sarah and Handful mature, their lives take separate courses. ![]() When they are caught, Handful receives a lashing, while Sarah is banned from her father’s library and all the books therein, her dream of becoming a lawyer dashed. Sarah breaks the law by secretly teaching Handful to read and write. Soon, Sarah and Handful have established a bond built on affection and guilt. Precocious Sarah is horrified at the idea of owning a slave but is given no choice by her mother, a conventional Southern woman of her time who is not evil but accepts slavery (and the dehumanizing cruelties that go along with it) as a God-given right. Called Hetty by the whites, Handful is just what her name implies-sharp tongued and spirited. In 1803, 11-year-old Sarah receives a slave as her birthday present from her wealthy Charleston parents. ![]() Kidd re-imagines Sarah’s life in tandem with that of a slave in the Grimké household. Sarah Grimké was an actual early abolitionist and feminist whose upbringing in a slaveholding Southern family made her voice particularly controversial. Kidd ( The Mermaid Chair, 2005, etc.) hits her stride and avoids sentimental revisionism with this historical novel about the relationship between a slave and the daughter of slave owners in antebellum Charleston. ![]()
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