Welcome to my spot on the blog tour today! I’m delighted to share my review of this exquisite novel!
Conjure Women
by
Afia Atakora
The pale-skinned, black-eyed baby is a bad omen. That’s one thing the people on the old plantation are sure of. The other is that Miss Rue – midwife, healer, crafter of curses – will know what to do.
But for once Rue doesn’t know. Times have changed since her mother Miss May Belle held the power to influence the life and death of her fellow slaves. Freedom has come. The master’s Big House lies in ruins. But this new world brings new dangers, and Rue’s old magic may be no match for them.
When sickness sweeps across her tight-knit community, Rue finds herself the focus of suspicion. What secrets does she keep amidst the charred remains of the Big House? Which spells has she conjured to threaten their children? And why is she so wary of the charismatic preacher man who promises to save them all?
Rue understands fear. It has shaped her life and her mother’s before her. And now she knows she must face her fears – and her ghosts – to find a new way forward for herself and her people.
Conjure Women is a story of the lengths we’ll go to save the ones we love, from a stunning new voice in fiction.
My Review
As a girl Rue learnt to conjure, to influence the lives closest her, to word spells and brew tinctures from herbs gathered in the wild around the plantation. Watching her mother’s swift, knowing hands work, she learnt how to deliver babies, to banish aches and pains, to heal and sew up wounds. Her mother Miss May Belle earned a respected name among their people and was deemed useful by ‘Marse Charles,’ their master, their owner, who liked his slaves kept healthy, working, and for the women to deliver strong babes who’d eventually work for him too. For years she cured and helped her people.
Now Rue has taken up her mother’s mantle and when they call for a healer, they call for Rue. The big house is just ash and splinters, a reminder of what once stood there, though no one can ever forget. Marse Charles is gone, and with him their bonds. Freedom, something they tasted only in their dreams, has come. They live by their own rules, in a town that is almost forgotten by the rest of the world. The war has gone. Freedom has come. But for the dark memories, now there is peace to be had.
That is until a baby is born. Miss Rue is woken by its wailing, and along with half the town, heeds it as an omen. The baby has pale skin and ink black eyes. Its birth is strange, vexing, and for Rue, who has delivered more babies than she can count on her fingers for more years than she can recall, it sets a fear in her heart. Soon illness runs like water through the town, taking children easily as stones taken up by a flood. Black smoke rises from chimneys, markers that there is death and a body that needs to be buried. Rue, unable to save them, comes under suspicion. Before, she was a healer, now she is a witch. Fury and blame are thrown at her door, for she must have done it, conjured the illness to take their children. She surely must be the one responsible.
Rue has to find a way of healing the ill, drawing out the poison and helping her town before it is too late and even her conjuring can’t cure them.
Conjure Women is a marvel. I sat down to read one more chapter, looked up hours later and realise I’d read half the book. Miss May Belle and Rue’s stories are raw, unfiltered, they will warm your heart and chill your bones all at once. It alternates between the 1850s/60s, and of course, it can be very upsetting in parts but it is also a tender, powerful and rich novel that will have you reading faster than you thought you could. It explores many themes, how fear and suspicion could twist up a place, how two women lived with courage and fire and grit. With masterful structure, beautiful writing, I was gripped. This book holds the reader so tight, takes you to a new place in an old time, introduces you to characters you will marvel at and remember. It’s a conjuring of its own. I loved it so very much and I recommend wholeheartedly.
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About the Author
Afia Atakora was born in the United Kingdom and raised in New Jersey. She graduated from New York University and has an MFA from Columbia University, where she was the recipient of the 2015 De Alba Fellowship. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she was a finalist for the 2010 Hurston/Wright Award for college writers.
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Ronnie Turner ~ Author & Book Blogger 