Yellow Wife

Yellow Wife is a powerful and unflinching Historical Fiction novel that vividly depicts the violent and inhumane treatment of Black slaves in 1850's America. While the story begins on a southern plantation, author Sadeqa Johnson focuses her story on a lesser known aspect of the era - the slave trade and slave jailers.

As as an avid reader of Historical Fiction, I have read many books set in this era, some written by a few of my favourite authors - Kathleen Grissom (The Kitchen House), Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes) and Alex Haley (Roots). Those are HUGE shoes to fill, but Johnson holds her own and gives readers a well-researched story based on the real life of Mary Lumpkin, a mulatto woman who was born a slave and became the mistress of Devil's Half Acre, a notorious jail that dealt with the punishment and sale of slaves in Richmond, Virginia.

Johnson does not shy away from the brutality of the time, but she also focuses on the complicated relationships in families and those connections that are formed and maintained in order to survive. The story centres around Pheby whose decisions (and inaction) were sometimes hard to get behind but will give readers much to discuss.

The story has a bit of an insular feel once Pheby begins living at the jail and focus shifts to her roles at the jail, the protection of her children and the Jailer's changing whims. Life at the jail - the sounds, smells, living conditions and violent punishments - are vividly described and are not for the faint of heart. 

I enjoyed this book and always love learning about new aspects of history, but I found the ending too rushed and although an epilogue gives some detail, I would have appreciated more closure. I was also surprised at how certain situations (childbirth, romance in horrific conditions) felt glossed over and less realistically described compared to other aspects of the story. 

Overall, this was an impressive and well-researched novel based on a part of American history I knew little about. It is a hard-hitting, emotional, and eye-opening story about family, loss, humanity and endurance. 

Links to my reviews of books mentioned in my review:

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to the publisher for providing me a complimentary digital copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 3.5 stars

Author: Sadeqa Johnson

Genre: Historical Fiction (slavery)

Type and Source: eBook from publisher via NetGalley

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada

First Published: January 12, 2021

Opening Line: Mama believed that the full moon was the most fertile 

night of the month, and that everything she touched held God's power.

Book Description from GoodReads: Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.

She’d been promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre, a jail in Richmond, Virginia, where the enslaved are broken, tortured, and sold every day. There, Pheby is exposed not just to her Jailer’s cruelty but also to his contradictions. To survive, Pheby will have to outwit him, and she soon faces the ultimate  sacrifice.