For a while, and in fact most of the time, this work gives a feeling of being an assignment for a school course, expanded into a full fledged novel and published because the mentor saw some spark, a bit more potential than in the routine work usually turned in. And unusually is, in many ways.
There is the unusual setting of a plantation before the civil war that works more like a place of respite and splendid solitude, in a forgotten corner if the South, with women and girls of both races mixing and going about, men rarely present, and then not in a commanding position but either as romantic and supporting figures or as threatening and worse intruders. There is the father of one who turns out to be the father of the other as well, so the two half sisters born the same night are all but twins. There is the mutual love between the four women that is completely kosher, a delight in this day and age where it had begun to seem that not so kosher scenes with completely unnecessary descriptions were forced into otherwise delightful light reading, perhaps under the misconception that it helped sell.
And then the looming shadow of the doubt about whether the daughter, the acknowledged one, was raped by her father, or merely brutalised, not explicitly acknowledged until the end.
But the really delightful air is that of the lives and mindset of these various women who, while they not only aren't against men but do acknowledge love and need of it, still are subjects in their own lives and minds, not objects. This makes it one of the comparatively rare tales. The interplay of various factors re races with various facets of the relationshios and probkems explored, is yet another delight.
And these make up a good deal towards softening the raw, unformed writing.
