On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys—as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself—have decided to turn around the farm’s bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired a “stockman” to impregnate them. But the women are determined to protect themselves.
What The Reviewers Say
Engaging, arresting … Where those novels provide a refreshing expansion of how we think about sexuality and masculinity under slavery and Reconstruction, Peyton adds fresh dimensions of gender and faith. The community of enslaved women is determined to keep their beliefs in spirits and their gods … The narrative thread of Night Wherever We Go can be challenging to follow — there are moments when it’s not clear which of the characters is narrating what we see, or how we are to understand the appearance of letters from a character who has set off on a journey without any access to pen or paper. But the arc of the story is intriguing enough to carry these details … A nontraditional love story, in that it asks us to remember that changing our personal history — acting with whatever power, gigantic or tiny, we have in our reach — transforms our communities, too. Even when we feel there are no good choices, we are always choosing between the risk of attempting to control an uncontrollable destiny, and the comfort of surrendering to a situation in order to survive.
Powerful … In a deft twist, a discovery by Harlow’s wife brings the plantation’s perilous drama to a climax.
Powerful if uneven … As a meditation on motherhood and bodily autonomy, this mostly succeeds, particularly in the novel’s closing chapters, yet the author’s choice to frequently shift perspective from the women to an omniscient narrator doesn’t quite work. Still, it’s clear Peyton has much talent to burn.
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