Based on a true story, it chronicles the lives of two young women in the early 1800's, one a very wealthy, aristocratic woman, the other, her Negro slave, given to her on her eleventh birthday. Sarah Grimke, the wealthy young woman, is mortified at the idea that her family would give her another human being as a gift. She already views slavery as evil at her tender age. Her opinions and her intellectual ambition as a woman in the antebellum South are both squelched by her own family and the society in which she lives. Although Sarah desires connection with her slave, Handful, a friendship between two girls from such differering backgrounds and with such divergent futures is impossible.
The author follows the lives of both young women during selected periods covering the next 35 years of their lives. Young Sarah's idealistic and downright radical ideas about slavery create multiple heartaches for her, as neither her family nor the Charleston, South Carolina socialites, with whom she is expected to associate, find any agreement with her views, until her much younger sister, Angelina, is born and grows up to share Sarah's views.
As for Handful, the slave girl, prospects are bleak for a girl born into slavery in that day. Handful is forced to endure humiliation, injustice, enforced ignorance (it was illegal to teach a slave to read), cruelty and crippling physical and emotional injuries, all the while learning to piece together the disparate patches of her life in quilts she and her mother make at night.
This story is one which could and should become part of high school social science curriculum because of its clear telling of a very dark chapter in American history. Yet, Kidd is a skillful writer, so the darkness does not overwhelm the reader. Like the careful quilter she chronicles, Kidd creates a tapestry of dark and light that tells the story beautifully, entertains, educates, and leaves her reader's with a legacy.
--Posted by Mama O.
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