User Profile

I try not to give five stars lightly, but Lea Vandervelde manages the near impossible: shedding light on the life of an enslaved woman.

Harriet Scott was the wife and co-litigant of Dred Scott in on of the most infamous Supreme Court cases in American history.

Harriet Scott literally did the dirty laundry of many of the most famous people of the pre- and post civil war era. It was largely through Harriet's efforts that Dred's story and legacy was kept alive. The books adds context to the life and times of these two key, but little known, figures in the events leading to the Civil War and the eventual ending of slavery.

This is an academic history, written by a skilled academic historian.
I found it totally fascinating.

I'm not sure why this book is getting so much praise.
The basic premise is good but the writing becomes increasingly cartoonish as the novel progresses and the dialog is stilted throughout.
The author drags out a murder scene (where the other characters react in way real people would not) that leads to an unsatisfying ending.
It's as though the author was the popular kid in her MFA program and now book publishing eco system feels compelled to praise her.
I asked a couple of other people to read this book to see if it was just me.
Neither of them made it past the third chapter.

It's Proust and I made it through it.
But by the end I wanted to reach into the novel and slap the main character over his increasing ridiculous relationship with his girlfriend.