Erin Crosby Eckstine's richly detailed historical fiction explores the life of Junie, an enslaved young woman in rural Alabama haunted by her sister's speaking, demanding ghost while she dares to dream of love and maybe even a life of freedom.
The Civil War is looming, and Junie is a sixteen-year-old who has spent her whole life enslaved on an Alabama plantation. She works alongside her family, caring for the plantation owners' daughter Violet, who is her own age, and gaining cursory exposure to Violet's studies of poetry and knowledge.
But Junie wanders restlessly at night, haunted by her sister Minnie's sudden death not long ago and by Minnie's ghost.
She fears that Minnie's death is her fault, and when Minnie asks her to complete three mysterious, questionable-feeling tasks, Junie feels compelled to do so.
When a potential suitor for Violet and his sister come for an extended stay, he makes known his casual cruelty toward Junie as well as toward his own enslaved servants--meanwhile, Junie is falling for his right-hand man, Caleb, and is finally letting down her guard with him.
When there is talk of Violet's engagement and pending marriage, Junie realizes that this shift would throw her own position into jeopardy. She feels torn by serving her sister's ghost when she wants to explore possibilities with Caleb, and she must determine how far she's willing to go to try to find freedom and autonomy in her life.
Erin Crosby Eckstine balances the horrors of living in an enslaved situation with the complex interpersonal relationships Junie forges. Without shying away from the often hopeless lack of autonomy, lack of power, and lack of say-so and constant fear of the enslaved, Eckstine builds a rich story of detail of life at the time. She also explores the complicated Violet-Junie dynamic, in which Junie is Violet's only company for many years, yet is at her mercy for all opportunities to learn, explore, and pause from backbreaking work.
The slow pace of uneventful Alabama life shifts dramatically when guests come to stay, and the story's events and the book's pacing begin snowballing in urgency as the story draws to its end.
More books about the Civil War
I received a prepublication edition of Junie courtesy of Random House-Ballantine Books and NetGalley.
For more Bossy reviews of books about the Civil War, please check out this link.
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