Night Wherever We Go
A Novel
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4.1 • 8 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A RECOMMENDED READ FROM: The Washington Post • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • CrimeReads • Library Journal
A gripping, radically intimate debut novel about a group of enslaved women staging a covert rebellion against their owners
On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys—as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself—have decided to turn around the farm’s bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired a “stockman” to impregnate them. But the women are determined to protect themselves.
Now each of the six faces a choice. Nan, the doctoring woman, has brought a sack of cotton root clippings that can stave off children when chewed daily. If they all take part, the Lucys may give up and send the stockman away. But a pregnancy for any of them will only encourage the Lucys further. And should their plan be discovered, the consequences will be severe.
Visceral and arresting, Night Wherever We Go illuminates each woman’s individual trials and desires while painting a subversive portrait of collective defiance. Unflinching in her portrayal of America’s gravest injustices, while also deeply attentive to the transcendence, love, and solidarity of women whose interior lives have been underexplored, Tracey Rose Peyton creates a story of unforgettable power.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Peyton's powerful if uneven debut unfurls on a floundering Texas plantation in the years leading up to the Civil War. Six Black women are enslaved to a white family, the Harlows, whom the women refer to as "the Lucys" (as in Lucifer). Among the enslaved are Patience, Nan, and Serah, and a chunk of the novel is conveyed in first-person plural as they're forced by the Lucys to breed with traveling "stockman" Zeke. Nan, trained in medicines, helps the others avoid pregnancy via herbal treatments, and after a second failed attempt, Zeke never returns. The women also sneak away from the plantation at night for clandestine gatherings, and, at one of them, Serah falls for Noah, a worker at a neighboring farm who longs to escape to Mexico. Meanwhile, the Lucys purchase two men, Monroe and Isaac, whom they marry to Serah and Patience, hoping they'll provide offspring to sell off. As a meditation on motherhood and bodily autonomy, this mostly succeeds, particularly in the novel's closing chapters, yet the author's choice to frequently shift perspective from the women to an omniscient narrator doesn't quite work. Still, it's clear Peyton has much talent to burn.
