There are things Beverly Jenkins does really, really well, and two things that I like much less about her work, that were all evident first when I read Topaz and appeared here in Indigo. So let’s get this compliment sandwich going! This book is about Hester Wyatt, a freed former slave and operator on Michigan’s Underground Railroad. She’s decidedly non-romantic after seeing how passion and love led her father to take on the shackles of slavery to be closer to her and her mother, only […]
In which I endorse a recent NPR romance recommendation
Listed as an honorable mention for Beverly Jenkins in NPR’s recent 100 recommended romances list, I gave Topaz a try as it covers two bases I haven’t much encountered: Westerns and African-American hero/ines. All things considered, I liked Topaz very much; though, admittedly, I found the prose to be lacking in sophistication (which is what knocks off the fifth star.) Still, Jenkins obviously has her finger on the pulse of what makes a romance successful. Katherine Love is a newspaper reporter in the late 19th […]
Another historical romance, with the Underground Railroad
4.5 stars Hester Wyatt was born as a slave, because her father, originally a free man, sold himself into slavery to be with her mother. When she was born, her mother severed part of her finger to make her more easy to identify, and Hester was found and taken in by her aunt Katherine, who taught her to read and write and raised her as her own. Now she lives in her dead aunt’s house, a valuable member of Michigan’s Underground Railroad. One night, she’s […]