Tina's Reading Books

I was attracted to this book because its heroine is one of the gens de couleur libres (free peoples of color) who lived in the French colonies in the 18th & 19th century.  Since I did an honors thesis on the subject when I was in college, I tend to pounce on anything that features that population in literature, fiction or film.

In this book set during the Battle of New Orleans, one of the final major battles of the War of 1812, British officer Henry Farlow is wounded, dazed, and the sole survivor of his regiment.  He stumbles upon an abandoned plantation only to see two women digging for treasure.

Thérèse Bondurant is the mixed-raced daughter of a now deceased white plantation owner who was big on promises but not so big on planning for the future.  She and her half- sister Jeanette are left alone and penniless with only the vague assurances that their father left them a buried treasure.

They are astonished to see Henry staggering toward them as they unearth a box.  But soon, Henry is the least of their problems.  They have a nefarious cousin who is the new owner of the plantation, who has sketchy plans for them,  and who is also hot on their heels.  

A series of terrible events force Henry, Thérèse & Jeannette to make a tense flight out of New Orleans to Canada, watching their backs every step of the way.  During their trek, Henry and Thérèse are forced to marry.  But Canada is not the safe haven they need it to be.  Once there they discover that Henry's regiment is still intact and he must travel to England to make sure he isn't denounced as a deserter.

For Thérèse, living as the not-white wife of a British soldier in Canada is one thing.  But going to England as the not-white wife of the younger son of an English Baron is another thing entirely.

And once they get to England, the stakes get even higher.

I have read other books by this author before and i have liked that she tends to create really good, sometimes tense, romantic conflicts for her main characters.  They are of the sort where you know a big event, another shoe waiting to drop, could seriously derail the couple's happiness or at the very least make their rocky road that much more rocky than it already is.

In this case it would seem to be the race issue.  After all, Thérèse is not white.  However it is more subtle than that.  When Henry first meets Thérèse he has no idea she is mixed race.  I was disappointed really at first.  What was the point in making her a free woman of color if you aren't to use it?  Sure her half-sister Jeannette is more visibly black (Jeannette's mother was black and Jeanette would have been considered a mulatto while Thérèse's mother was mixed race and Thérèse would have been an octoroon). But for all intents and purposes Thérèse can pass as white quite easily.  Not in New Orleans of course where everyone knows who she is and, well, the one-drop rule.  But once they leave the territory, no one blinks twice at her.  

But what comes very clear is that this is not an external thing.  it is an internal one.  Thérèse  may look white on the outside, but all her life she has known herself as a woman of color.  She grew up in that society.  She was expected to marry a young man of color (whom we meet briefly).  Most importantly that is how she identifies.  She could easily pass and for large portions of the book she does.  But she doesn't want to. She wants to be able to be true to herself.

So the conflict is waging on two fronts for our couple.  Henry and Thérèse are grappling with their unconventional meet & marriage.  They are having to navigate the odd romantic waters they find themselves in, they are attracted to each other and trying to make their marriage real and right.  I liked the romance between Henry and Thérèse.  They felt like partners throughout the whole book for the most part.  

But both of them have internal worries.  Henry is rightfully worried about his probable status as a deserter so he is keen to get to England.  But Thérèse knows she can't be the sort of wife he needs if they go there.  She's is also resentful that she must keep her real ancestry a secret.

In the meantime, in a move that I can only see as some kind of compensation for her own inability to assert her identity, Thérèse insists on making sure Jeanette is acknowledged as her sister and treated as a lady of the house. Jeanette is an incredibly poised young woman who has a maturity far beyond her young years.  Her status always felt to me as somewhat precarious but in some ways the author made Jeanette more pragmatic and realistic that Thérèse so I was never as worried for Jeanette's state of mind as I was of Thérèse's, oddly.  I just knew Jeanette would come out ok, whatever happened.

So in the end I liked how the author used race  in the book.  It was a nuanced way to deal with it, reminding us that race, color  and identity is a lot more complex than complexion.  Interestingly, those two words share the same root meaning.