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A haunting, beautifully written
novel set in early-nineteenth-century Louisiana: the tale
of a slave girl’s journey—emotional and physical—from
captivity to freedom.
Susan Straight has been called “a
writer of exceptional gifts and grace” (Joyce Carol
Oates). In A Million Nightingales she brings those
gifts to bear on the story of Moinette, daughter of an African
mother and a white father she never knew. While her mother
cares for the plantation linens, Moinette tends to the master’s
daughter, which allows her to eavesdrop on lessons. She also
learns that she is property, and at fourteen she is sold,
separated from her mother without a chance to say goodbye.
Heartbroken and terrified, and with a full understanding of
what she will risk, Moinette begins almost immediately to
prepare herself for the moment when she will escape.
It is Moinette’s own voice that we
hear—bright, rhythmic, observant, and altogether captivating—as
she describes her journey through a world of brutality, sexual
violence, and loss. Quick to see the patterns of French, American,
and African life play out around her, Moinette makes her way
from sugarcane fields through mysterious bayous to the streets
of Opelousas, where the true meaning of freedom emerges from
the bonds of love.
An uncommonly rich novel, brimming with
event and character, A Million Nightingales is a powerful
confirmation of the remarkable novelist we have in Susan Straight.
Susan Straight is the author of
five previous novels, including the best-selling I Been
in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots
and Highwire Moon, which was a finalist for the National
Book Award and won the California Book Award. She is a regular
commentator for NPR, and her fiction and essays have appeared
in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Nation,
Salon, Zoetrope, McSweeney’s, and Best American
Short Stories, among many other publications. She has
received a Lannan Foundation Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
She lives in Riverside, California, with her three daughters.
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