This Is What I Am Reading

I am reading Wench by Dolen Parkins-Valdez because I read somewhere, can't remember where exactly, that this book was like The Help . Well so far this book has little similarity to the Help. It is similar in that it is about a group of black friends who are all in a similar position. That is all to the similarity.

The four women in this story are slaves from the South. They holiday with their slave masters at Tawawa House in Ohio which is a free state. The slave masters are also the fathers of their children. There is a similar holiday resort for free blacks in Ohio. I am on page 56 and so far Mawu, the newcomer to Tawawa and the defiant one, wants to escape. She's been inside the resort for the free blacks. All her children, except one who is mentally challenged, have been sold so she does not feel like she has a strong tie to the plantation where she is enslaved. The other women have children in the south and are reluctant to leave. One of the slave women, Lizzie imagines that she is in love with her master and he loves her in return.

The Tawawa House, by the way, really existed. See what the writer says about the story behind the story.