The wedding gift

By Marlen Suyapa Bodden

Subjects: Alabama, fiction, Slaves, Fiction, Fiction, family life, Slavery, Sisters, fiction, Friendship, Fiction, historical, general, Gifts, Large type books, Slaves, fiction, Sisters, Friendship, fiction, Fathers and daughters, fiction, Fathers and daughters

Description: When prestigious Alabama plantation owner Cornelius Allen gives his daughter Clarissa's hand in marriage, he presents her with a wedding gift: Sarah, the young slave with whom she was raised. Sarah is also Clarissa's half-sister, a product of Allen's longtime relationship with his house slave, Emmeline. Raised by an educated mother, Clarissa is not the proper Southern belle she appears to be, with ambitions of loving whom she chooses. Sarah equally hides behind the façade of being a docile house slave as she plots to escape. Both women bring these tumultuous secrets and desires with them to their new home. When Clarissa's husband suspects that their newborn son is illegitimate, Clarissa and Sarah are sent back to her parents, Cornelius and Theodora, in shame, setting in motion a series of events that will destroy this once powerful family.