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.

It’s not every day that the story of how your great-great grandparents met makes for such good reading. But that is the case for Tammye Huf, whose riveting historical romance A More Perfect Union is based on just that. Here we are introduced to Henry O’Toole, an Irish immigrant who flees the Great Famine to make a life in America, and Sarah, a Black slave, torn from her family and made to toil on a Virginia plantation. A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick, Tammye’s simple but elegant prose spins a heartfelt tale of love and desperation, and what it means to lose your freedom.

In 1848 Henry O’Toole escapes famine-stricken Ireland for America. An itinerant blacksmith, he ends up at Jubilee Plantation in Virginia, where one of his jobs is making collars for the slaves. There he meets Sarah, a newly arrived house slave who has to deal with the dangerous demands and whims of her white masters as well as find her place in the pecking order of the slaves.

The house is run with a strict hand by her fellow slave Maple, the mixed-race daughter of a slave owner who gave her as a wedding present to her own half-sister, the wife of the owner of Jubilee. Maple has been forced to leave her husband and daughter behind at her father’s plantation, and her longing for them is viscerally described. Henry and Sarah fall tentatively in love, their interracial relationship a source of great disapproval and danger.

Tammye Huf’s powerful and convincing novel is based on the story of her great-great-grandparents.