<p><strong>Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award!</strong></p><p>"M<strong>onumental." &#8212;Booklist (starred review)</strong></p><p><strong>"A marathon masterpiece."&#8212;Kirkus (starred review)</strong></p><p><strong>"Necessary."&#8212;SLJ (starred review)</strong></p><p><strong>"Shocking and dramatic."&#8212;Shelf Awareness (starred review)</strong></p><p><strong>"Mesmerizing, confounding and vividly rendered."&#8212;Book Page (starred review)</strong></p><p><strong>"Williams-Garcia's storytelling is magnificent; her voice honest and authentic."&#8212;Horn Book (starred review)</strong></p><p>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.</p><p>While Madame plots her last hurrah, stories that span generations&#8212;from the big house to out in the fields&#8212;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.</p><p>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&#8212;empathetic, brutal, and entirely human&#8212;and essential reading for both teens and adults grappling with the long history of American racism.</p>