The Kitchen House

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom.

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Touchstone;(February 2, 2010)
ISBN-10: 1439153663

(omg! Amazon said I bought this book back in April of 2013!!! so as you can tell I jumped on it right away! hehJ)

 

 Amazon.com Review

When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family.

Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin.

Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.

The Kitchen House is a tragic story of page-turning suspense, exploring the meaning of family, where love and loyalty prevail.

I really should have read this sooner.  Excellent book.  Slavery is definitely not my most favorite topic, but being that this story begins in 1791... it is also history, which I do like reading about.

In this book you get to meet the families that "adopt" a young white girl and accept her as their own.  As awful and as hard as much of this story is, it is also about family and love and what's most important in lives even back in 1791.

There wasn't any great mystery, and part of this book are very sad.  But it was a very good piece of historical fiction.  And I found none of it to be "unbelievable".    The accents and language used back then is throughout the book, so to some they might not like that.. I found it to make the story more believable.

All in all.. a heartwarming story.  Both happy and sad.  Pretty much what could be said about life even now.