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Wash (2013)

by Margaret Wrinkle(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0802120660 (ISBN13: 9780802120663)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Atlantic Monthly Press

review 1: "Wash" was a beautifully written book set in a unique time period. Most books are set during the Civil War or very climactic times, but this one was set in Tennessee in the 1820s during the expansion of the West. This choice made the moral conflicts interesting in terms of what was happening to the geography of the country at that time. I enjoyed the strong characters of Mena, Rufus, and Pallas and that's what reallly kept me reading. I would say I was not as intrigued by either Wash or Richardson and I never fully grasped what specifically drew Richardson to Wash in particular, though I suppose it was a mix of his mother, Mena's, doing as well as their link to the horses on the farm. I also felt the last quarter of the book petered out slowly, though Pallas' voice will st... moreick with me.
review 2: A moving novel told in the voices of three people about slavery in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Wash, short tor Washington, is a child when his mother Mena is bought by Richardson, a plantation owner from Tennessee. Wash is an intelligent child and both mother and son are good looking. Richardson seems partial to them. The demands of the Western movement and the revolution means the need for more slaves and the end result is breeding them. Wash becomes a breeder of slaves as way to make money for Richardson. His mother, an African tries to help him deal with the situation by keeping an inner place inside where his West African roots can flourish. It is not an easy life and Richardson, considered a good master, has his own troubles as a poor officer in both the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, where he endangers his men and ends up imprisoned in Canada for 13 years with no one willing to randsome him. The cost of his long absence for his slaves are great. Mena and Wash stay at the Thompson plantation for 13 years and Wash is severely tortured and hurt by the sons. He continues to breed but his eyesight is permanently damaged. In comes Pallas, a healer who has been seriously beaten and becomes the love of Wash's life. The third voice in the narrative is Pallas who cares for both Wash and Richardson when they are ill, but create deep ties with them. The story is in the bonds of the relationship betwwen the three but also in the idea of master and slave and the illusive freedom which the whites fear to give their slaves as promised and knowledge of slaves that they have to wait, for their children to be free rather than themselves because someday it will end. less

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