From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees and the
forthcoming novel The Book of Longings, a novel about two
unforgettable American women. Writing at the height of her
narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a
masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire
to have a voice in the world. Hetty "Handful" Grimke, an urban
slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life
beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy
Grimke household. The Grimke's daughter, Sarah, has known from an
early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she
is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. Kidd's sweeping novel
is set in motion on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given
ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We
follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years,
as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each
other's destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by
guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the
stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and
sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah
will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and
ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her
fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in
the abolition and women's rights movements. Inspired by the
historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to
flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both
real and invented, including Handful's cunning mother, Charlotte,
who courts danger in her search for something better. This
exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks
with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history,
through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and
expression will leave no reader unmoved.
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