Tammye Huf

Also by this author

A More Perfect Union

Tammye Huf

£12.99 Buy now Recommend

‘Ambitious, sweeping, unafraid of acknowledging the complexity of the times and guaranteed to leave you welling up, this is storytelling at its finest.’—Francesca Brown, Stylist

imageRead an extract

BBC Radio 2 Book Club choice
The Times Best Books for October
Stylist Best New Books
The Purrfect Read Favourite Books of 2020: Honorable Mentions
Secret World of a Book 2020 Recommended Reads

This extraordinary debut novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in Black women’s writing. It is an interracial love story set in pre-Civil War America, and inspired by the true story of the author’s great-great grandparents. Along with love and race, it touches on themes of identity, sacrifice, belonging and survival.

Henry O’Toole sails to America in 1848 to escape poverty and famine in Ireland, only to find anti-Irish prejudice awaiting him. Determined never to starve again, he changes his surname to Taylor and heads south to the state of Virginia, seeking work as a travelling blacksmith on the prosperous plantations.

Sarah is a slave. Torn from her family and sold to Jubilee Plantation, she must navigate the hierarchy of her fellow slaves, the whims of her white masters, and now the attentions of the mysterious blacksmith.

Fellow slave Maple oversees the big house with bitterness and bile, and knows that a white man’s attention spells trouble. Given to her half-sister as a wedding present by their white father, she is set on being reunited with her husband and daughter, at any cost.

Research included contemporary slave narratives (printed to further the abolitionist cause), digitally remastered audio recordings of former slaves, legislation on the question of slavery in the mid-19th century, historical texts on the Irish famine and first-hand accounts of English visitors to Ireland at the time, the writings of Charles Trevelyan (responsible for famine relief under Peel and Russell), historical texts on the antebellum South, and visits to the historically preserved Jubilee Plantation in Virginia on which the novel’s plantation is based.

Publishers Weekly

18 November 2021

Huf debuts with a wrenching chronicle of slavery in the U.S. inspired by the experiences of her great-great grandparents, an Irish immigrant and an enslaved Black woman. In 1848, Henry O’Toole flees the potato famine in Ireland, arriving penniless and starving in New York City. Anti-Irish prejudice keeps Henry from getting work, so he changes his surname to Taylor and heads to Virginia. After working as a blacksmith making neck rings and wrist shackles at various plantations, Henry falls in love with Sarah, an enslaved woman at Jubilee Plantation. They try to keep their illegal relationship secret, but after word gets out, the other enslaved people on the plantation bully and snub Sarah. Then, after witnessing an enslaved worker’s torture, Henry vows he will never make chains again. Narration alternates between Henry, Sarah, and Maple, an enslaved half sister of the plantation master’s wife, who causes trouble for Sarah. It seems as if Sarah will never be free after Henry’s attempts to buy her freedom fail, but the couple’s hope and bravery persist. The descriptions of pain and violence are disturbing if familiar, but this stands out by achieving the tone of a story passed down through generations. It adds up to a memorable tale of love and freedom.

View source

Buying options