Jubilee

Hey this is truggs with my first real article, which is going to be a book review on a book I read over the summer.

So for school we had to read two books over the summer, one we had a choice on and the other was already chosen for us. I will go into detail about the choice book once I finish it, but for now I want to talk about the chosen book. The book takes place back in the 1860’s or so and in Dawson, Georgia

This year we had to read a book called Jubilee, which is a book about a girl named Vyry born into slavery, but not just by two slave parents, but by a slave mother and a white man, who is the master of the plantation they live on. My wording may seem a little confusing, but trust me just go with it. Anyways, this girl named Vyry is as white as any white person, but she is still concidered a black slave and her father seems to not even care that she is his daughter. As Vyry gets older all the slaves she has come to know and respect seem to be dying around her and as the book continues, she eventually ends up being taken care of by Aunt Sally, who is the cook for the “big house,” which is what they call the house where the white family who owns the land and slaves lives. When Vyry is with Aunt Sally she learns a lot about cooking and finding certain berries and other things to use to heal people and cook with. Eventually she does fall in love with a free black man who works as a blacksmith and is named Randall Ware.

The book is split up into 3 sections, but still has chapters witihin those sections. The first section was about Vyry’s young years and all the things talked about above. The second section is about the war years and in this section, which you have probably guessed already, is about the years of the civil war between the north and the south in America. During this section, almost all of the Dawson family (the family who owns  the plantation) is killed, either by fighting in the war or other reasons. All of the men seem to not die directly in the war, but seem to die later on after taking gunshot wounds that they cannot seem to heal from, and the mother of the household just kindof dies along with them in this section, leaving only one daughter left behind. The one daughter later sustains a head injury when the soldiers from the north, called the Union, come and basically just destroy the house and everything around it. She becomes kindof insane and thinks she is just a young girl again. At this point the main character, Vyry has become an excellent cook and prepares the meals for everyone on the plantation. Once the Union soldiers come and along with them all the freed black people, one of them stays behind. His name is Innis Brown and he becomes good friends with Vyry’s son who she had with her husband who she hasnt seen in 2 years. So basically she waits for a while seeing if he husband will come back, and then leaves with Innis and get married to him and starts a new life.