Life becomes more complicated when her husband buys a slave named Bo from the Holt residence. Dahlia’s new mother-in-law analyzes her every move, her rogue brother-in-law wants her for himself, and the slaves who suspect her runaway status use her secret as blackmail. But once installed as lady of the manor - under the name Lily Dove - at her new husband’s plantation, maintaining the lie about her parentage becomes a matter of life and death. When he abruptly proposes marriage that very afternoon, she embraces the opportunity to escape slavery without questioning his motives. Suddenly, the chance for one appears.ĭuring an outing to town on her 16th birthday, she is mistaken for white by a young man. Caught between guilt over the preferential treatment she receives and petty jealousy from her masters, Dahlia yearns for a better existence. Thanks to her beauty, Dahlia is brought by Holt into the mansion to live and serve as a ladies’ maid for her spoiled white half-sisters. She is also his slave, one of nearly a dozen he has fathered with his Black laborers. In What Passes as Love, Dahlia is the light-skinned daughter of Lewis Holt, a wealthy white plantation owner. Thomas, best known for her successful Nappily Ever After series, offers now an historical novel about a Black woman passing as white in 1850s Virginia.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |