Used book – wash, Margaret Wrinkle

Sensitive, poetic, driven by a structure intertwining the voices of three characters, a debut novel enthusiastically compared by the press to Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, which transcends eras to recount a little-known episode in the history of slavery in the United States.

Wash draws his strength from the voices of his African ancestors; from the memories of his mother, Mena; from the shamanic rituals she initiated him into as a child; from the talismans she bequeathed to him; and today, from these stolen moments along the river, with Pallas, also a slave, mixed-race and a healer.

His strength is what allowed him to survive. The humiliations of his former masters, jealous of his ability to endure the worst without ever showing his pain; the blows that cost him an eye; the branding with a hot iron, on his cheek, of the letter for fugitives.

This strength is what helps him endure that Richardson, his master, to save the plantation from impending ruin, now uses him as a breeding stud. That he rents him out every Friday to neighboring owners to impregnate their enslaved women.

And when his strength falters, Wash clings to Pallas and listens to her speak of the bond uniting master and slaves in a spider web as fragile as it is inevitable.

Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize