Book Blurb:
Ten years before the Civil War, the country was changing. New territories were opening in the West; there was a movement for women's rights; thousands were heading to California to find gold; and the situation of Black people, both free and enslaved, was even worse than before.
In this novel, a young Pennsylvania woman has inherited property in Virginia. She travels there intending to sell the plantation and free the slaves, but her uncle's debts stand in her way. She must stay and make the plantation profitable. The son of a neighboring planter complicates the matter further, leading to a difficult choice.
Book Buy Link: https://geni.us/qEwf
Editorial Review:
Packed with romantic, social and political tension, Missoo takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through the deep south, just before the American Civil War. Susanna, born in the south but raised in the north by abolitionists, inherits not only her family’s plantation but a dilemma. How can she reconcile her love of the beautiful Elsinore plantation with her belief that no person can own another human being? She resolves to set the slaves free and sell the plantation, but that’s before she meets back up with an old friend from her childhood, Quentin, who has turned into a handsome and desirable young man. A man who seems to want both her and her plantation.
We first meet Susanna, as she journeys to her family estate. There she meets Perkins, her late Uncle’s overseer and the dashing Quentin. These two men represent the fundamental tensions built into the story. Perkins stands for the conservative, and the cruel, and tries to block her way forward. Quentin on the other hand appears to care for her, but can she trust him? Is he just after her estate or does he truly love her? Susanna is further confused by her ideas around the direction she saw her life taking. On the one hand she saw herself living a solitary, independent life, but her growing feelings for Quentin throw her deeper into her dilemma.
The tension racks up again when she discovers that her uncle had mismanaged the property and there is a mortgage in place which, if not paid off by the profits from the next cotton crop, will result in both the plantation and slaves being sold out from under her. She decides the only way forward is to tell her workers about the threat to their lives and families. This brings to life a whole slew of interesting supporting characters, and it would have been easy to be overwhelmed by the many names. The author makes sure each one has a unique and memorable identity, from Portia, the housekeeper and cook, through Narissa, Horatio, Henry, Bass, right down to Bingo and Tinker, the carriage horses. By the end of the first ten chapters, each of their stories sweeps you up and you deeply care for all of them.
As the reality of the situation sinks in, by law the freed slaves would have to leave their only known home within a year or risk being punished, or worse, hung, Susanna comes under pressure from the other landowners. They rely on free labour to work their plantations and will fight hard to retain their slaves. She’s unsure where Quentin stands on all this. Is he on her side, the side of the abolitionists, or does he support the status quo? Her trust in him is further shaken when revelations about how his brother treats his wife come to her attention. Is he a misogynist like his brother, and most of the southern men, or would he treat her as an equal if she was to agree to marry him. Personal, social and political tensions all collide as Susanna struggles to find a way through.
In an attempt to prepare her people for what awaits them Susanna further upsets local society and norms by placing some of her slaves as apprentices to local craftsmen. This does not go down well and an incident with the Farrell family, her neighbours, demonstrates the cruelty and inhumanity experienced by slaves during this shameful period in U.S.A. history. But even here there is a deftness of touch from the writer, which opens the eyes without glorifying the brutality and horror people experienced. After the death of one of her own slaves at Farrell’s hands he gives her an eight-year-old boy as a replacement. Wanting to measure his feet for new shoes the following scene unfolds.
“She’d have to make an outline of his feet and hope she could buy some boots in town. It was too late to order them. She went into the house and came back into the kitchen with a piece of paper and a pencil.
“Freddie, come here.” While he walked over to her, she laid the paper on the lowest porch step. “I’m going to make a picture of your feet, alright?” She sat him on the step above the paper and started to remove his shoe, and he began screaming and kicking. “I need a picture so you can get new boots. What’s the matter?” Portia came out of the kitchen to see what was happening, and Juliet came over to the steps, too.
Portia sat beside Freddie and soothed him. “Missoo don’t hurt you, Freddie. Missoo never hurt you.” She looked up at Susanna. “He don’t have toes.” She made a cutting motion with her hand. With gentle words she managed to remove the boy’s shoes and socks. Every toe had been removed.” Page 114, l4-12
The author evokes the beauty of the southern landscape and the unique way of life in compelling, descriptive passages, but the gentle humour of the authors voice, as she walks us through both the landscape and lifestyle of the period shines through. Sitting eating in the splendour of Elsinore’s dining room Susanna reflects,
“But right now she was faced with a plate of chicken and parsnips. There was nothing that could be done to parsnips to make them palatable, and Portia kept serving them to her. For the last three days she had choked down some of them, but this time, she ate the chicken and a biscuit with gravy and left the parsnips where they were, quieted Aunt Ella’s voice in her head that said never to waste food. She turned twenty-one that very day, for heaven’s sake. On her next birthday she would be in Philadelphia with everything available, everything she wanted, and no parsnips.”
Unable to release her slaves and stay in Virginia because of legal, social and political pressures, and believing Quentin to be lost to her, Susanna sets off for California, leading her now freed slaves on an exodus of biblical proportions. The obstacles they meet along the way make for great reading, but a reader might feel a little disappointed here for it was all over too soon. A hallmark to a great read is a reader wanting more of this part of the story. It could almost have been a whole second book in a series, for Susanna, resourceful and daring, really comes into her own. This reviewer, for one, hopes there will be a second book in the series that follows the fortunes of Missoo and the Elsinore household as they try to survive in their new world.
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“Missoo” by Susan Berry Eberhardt receives 4.5 stars from The Historical Fiction Company
To have your historical novel editorially reviewed and/or enter the HFC Book of the Year contest, please visit www.thehistoricalfictioncompany.com/book-awards/award-submission
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