"The Kitchen House" Kathleen Grissom

Reading this book made me feel the same way that "The Help" did.  I felt I shouldn't like it, that I should prefer a genuine (read nonfiction) story written by people with a more direct connection to the history, but I got involved with the story and had to finish it.

The book has a blurb from Alice Walker saying, "This book, like The Help, does important work." I'll agree that the context is important for us to remember, that is, the life of slaves and indentured servants at the turn of the 19th Century.  However, I wanted a more intellectual book, but this is simply a soap opera set in the slave South.  That is the part I felt guilty about - that I actually enjoyed it.

It is easy to forget that white immigrants were often indentured to pay the price of past debts or ocean passage.  In this case, Lavinia is placed into service as a child to pay the debts of her parents who perished in the crossing from Ireland to the U.S.  She lives in the kitchen house and grows up along side the slaves of the plantation, adopting them as her family.

The story is told from the viewpoints of Lavinia and Belle, the slave child of the plantation owner.  Switching back and forth between narrators lets us see two sides of the story, exposing the idealism of Lavinia and her misconceptions about life across the color line in the antebellum South and providing a more complete picture of life on the plantation.  As a child, Lavinia does not understand that her possible upward mobility at the end of her indenture does not apply to her new-found family, nor does she understand the power structure of the plantation even into adulthood.  This lack of awareness is sometimes, but not always, a source of the tragedies of the novel.

The story spans Lavinia's life from the age of 6 until young adulthood.  During this time there are many changes at the plantation affecting the living situation of the slaves, the health and fortune of the owners and the productivity of the farm.  The story is engaging and the pace of tension and release builds nicely to the climax.  There were times when I was bored with the story and thought about abandoning the book, but find the final scenes rewarding and satisfying.