From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees and the
forthcoming novel The Book of Longings, a novel about two
unforgettable American women.
Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk
Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and
the desire to have a voice in the world.
Hetty "Handful" Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century
Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose
her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke's daughter, Sarah,
has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the
world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.
Kidd's sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah's eleventh birthday,
when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her
handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five
years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each
other's destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt,
defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.
As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and
sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will
experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism
before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless
younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition
and women's rights movements.
Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the
record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters,
both real and invented, including Handful's cunning mother, Charlotte,
who courts danger in her search for something better.
This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks
with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through
women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will
leave no reader unmoved.
