The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

I enjoyed this book--I was desperate for a good book and found one here. I read it is 3 days, although there are a lot of characters to keep up with and the plot is not simple. The prologue is gripping. . . the white woman is running toward the big house when she sees a body hanging from a large oak tree. It is clear she knows who the body is, but the story shifts to flashback, so you have to wait until the end to get the whole story. The story is set in the late 1700's in south Virginia, including a few scenes in Williamsburg. The title refers to the part of the plantation where the slaves prepared meals for "the big house." Although the point of view shifts between Belle, one of the slaves, and Lavinia, a red haired indentured servant to the white family, it is Lavinia's story that you follow. Lavinia lives with the slaves, and learns to love them as her family, but she is separated from them because of her color. The story spans two decades, and you have to be on your toes to keep up with all the characters and their relationship to each other. It's an intriguing story, and the Reading Group Guide questions at the end are good to think about after finishing the story, even if you didn't read the book for a book club discussion. The bad guy in the book (Rankin, the evil plantation overseer) was sort of stereotyped, but most of the other characters were presented as complex, realistic characters. The true gut wrencher is realizing how helpless these people were (the slaves as well as the white wife) to the capricious feelings of white males.