Review: The House Girl
Posted by Cathie on Thursday, March 27, 2014. Filed under: fiction, historical fiction, published in 2013, review, reviewed in 2014
The House Girl by Tara Conklin
Published by: William Morrow
Our source: Complimentary copy from the publisher
Virginia, 1852. Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell. New York City, 2004. Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in an elite law firm, is given a difficult, highly sensitive assignment that could make her career: she must find the “perfect plaintiff” to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.
It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine’s would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit—if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl’s faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina’s mother die? And why will he never speak about her?
Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice.
It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine’s would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit—if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl’s faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina’s mother die? And why will he never speak about her?
Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice.
Our thoughts:
I have to admit; in the beginning of this book I was skeptical. I mean a class action lawsuit for the ancestors of slaves to collect money from companies that benefited from slave labor? That would be an impossible case not only to try, but also to figure out who should be compensated.
It is not often that a book makes me cry, but this one had me sitting there teary eyed while reading it. Conklin did a fabulous job of weaving together a tale of two exceptional women, spanning a time difference of over 150 years, and tying it all together beautifully. This is the type of book that stays with you long after you've read it.
We would recommend this to:
Fans of Historical Fiction
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