I am not really sure how to review this book but what I *will* say is seeing a bunch of 1 and 2 star reviews from white men (and a few women) is kind of infuriating. "I don't care about the characters, they weren't well done enough..." blah blah blah. "The secondary characters were so forgettable..."

Have you, perhaps considered that might have been the intent? On a plantation a slave is just a slave to white masters and oversee-ers. They are all the same, if one dies...well golly it's a shame if it's the one that does the party trick, but otherwise? Meh, there are more black bodies to take their place.

The people complaining about the "action" not happening until further in? Well...I guess you don't consider the brutality of plantation life to be "action".

This book was hard. It was hard to read the n word so many times, it was hard to read about the hangings and the torture and the rape, it was hard to understand how this was the reality of life for slaves for SO MANY generations.

Still, as a white lady, I will never, ever understand how hard it was to LIVE these experiences. To have these experiences still impacting families to this day.

This is an important piece of literature and I will be having my children read it as well, once they are a little bit older.