wench \'wench\ n. from Middle English "wenchel," 1 a: a girl, maid, young woman; a female child.
This is the title of my book club's February selection by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Wench is Perkins-Valdez's daring debut novel. Provocative, insightful, endearing and courageous, this is one of the best debuts I've ever read, if not the best. Wench follows the stories of four slave women who are mistresses to their white slaveholders, but Lizzie is the protagonist with/through whom most of this book is revealed. I'm not going to delve too much into the meat of this lovely novel because I don't want to disclose too much and spoil it. As you can tell, I've already read it; this was such an entertaining and compelling story that I breezed through it in two days! I can hardly wait to discuss this with the rest of the group (I already know Racquel loved it, too).
