Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award! 7 starred reviews! "Monumental." -- Booklist (starred review) * "A marathon masterpiece."-- Kirkus (starred review) * "Necessary."-- SLJ (starred review) * "Shocking and dramatic."-- Shelf Awareness (starred review) * "Mesmerizing, confounding and vividly rendered."-- Book Page (starred review) * "Williams-Garcia's storytelling is magnificent; her voice honest and authentic."-- Horn Book (starred review) This astonishing novel from three-time National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia about the interwoven lives of those bound to a plantation in antebellum America is an epic masterwork--empathetic, brutal, and entirely human--and essential reading for both teens and adults grappling with the long history of American racism. 1860, Louisiana .

After serving as mistress of Le Petit Cottage for more than six decades, Madame Sylvie Guilbert has decided, in spite of her family's objections, to sit for a portrait. While Madame plots her last hurrah, stories that span generations--from the big house to out in the fields--of routine horrors, secrets buried as deep as the family fortune, and the tangled bonds of descendants and enslaved, come to light to reveal a true portrait of the Guilberts. Rita Williams-Garcia is one of the preeminent authors of our time. She has been honored with the Children's Literature Lecture Award from the American Library Association.