Marlen Bodden - The Wedding Gift
When wealthy plantation owner Cornelius Allen marries off his daughter Clarissa, he presents her with a wedding gift: a young slave woman called Sarah. It just so happens that Sarah is Allen’s daughter as well, the product of a long-term sexual relationship with his slave Emmeline.
When Clarissa’s husband rejects her newborn son as illegitimate and sends Clarissa and Sarah back to the Allens, their return sets in motion a series of events that will destroy the once-powerful family.
Told through the alternating view points of Sarah and Theodora Allen, Cornelius’s wife, The Wedding Gift shines a glaring light on the brutality of slavery in the antebellum South. Based on a court case in 19th century Alabama, The Wedding Gift draws readers into the complex world of American slavery and provides an unflinching account of the tactics used to control women, slave and free.
This compelling historical novel twists and turns through the wealthy planter and merchant societies of Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, and New York, culminating in the British West Indies, where its controversial and shocking conclusion is sure to leave readers aghast.
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