Last month we read "The Help". Reading the Wench this month was an interesting comparison of black women's lives in the mid 1850's - pre-Civil War and the 1960's and the emergence of the Civil Rights movement.

Wench is a good quick read and it is hard to put down. It was interesting to read that the Tawawa House was a real resort in Xenia, Ohio and that it attracted Southern Men and their slave mistresses. The plot is fictional but believable. It is told from the main character Lizzie’s point of view and it illuminates the unique difficulties of being a black woman during slavery. It provided a glimpse into the contrasting lives of the white wealthy Northerns and their slave owning Southern counterparts, free working Blacks and the enslaved and married white women with their husbands slave mistresses. We wish the author had developed the characters a bit more.