The wedding gift pdf ebook review
Marlen Suyapa Bodden
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marlen Suyapa Bodden is a lawyer in New York City. She has more than
two decades' experience representing poor people and low-wage and
immigrant workers, many of whom are severely underpaid, if paid at
all. She drew on her knowledge of modern and historical slavery, human
trafficking, and human rights abuses to write The Wedding Gift, her first
novel. Marlen is a graduate of New York University School of Law and
Tufts University.
THE NOVEL
When wealthy plantation owner Cornelius Allen marries off his daughter Clarissa, he
presents her with a wedding gift: a young slave woman called Sarah. It just so happens
that Sarah is Allen's daughter as well, the product of a long-term sexual relationship with
his slave Emmeline. When Clarissa's husband rejects her newborn son as illegitimate and
sends Clarissa and Sarah back to the Allens, their return sets in motion a series of events
that will destroy the once-powerful family.
Told through the alternating view points of Sarah and Theodora Allen, Cornelius's wife,
The Wedding Gift shines a glaring light on the brutal world of slavery in the antebellum
American South. Marlen Suyapa Bodden's compelling historical novel explores how
planters controlled slaves and free women alike, propelling them along a taut social
tightrope as they struggled for freedom and autonomy in an oppressive and patriarchal
world. The controversial and shocking ending is sure to leave readers aghast.
If you like historical fiction, this book is a vivid, and sometimes heartbreaking, portrayal of
early American slavery and the oppression of women. You can tell this book is well
researched, but the impressive part is how seamlessly it is woven into the story.
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