Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

This is the story of four slave mistresses, known as "wenches " who become friends at Tawawa House in Ohio.  Tawawa is a resort that "masters" travel to for a few weeks each summer with their "slave wives," leaving their actual wives home on the plantation with the kids. Of course, some of the kids are the offspring of the wench and the master, rather than the wife and the master. It's a tough book but very interesting and enlightening. I was not aware of this place Tawawa, but it really existed and later became a Wilberforce University, attended mainly by African Americans, some of the first students being the offspring of these wenches and their masters! And  W.E.B DuBois taught there.

The women contemplate freedom, learn each others' stories and deepest fears. Some stories are brutal, but the main character, Lizzie, sleeps in the same bed with her owner, the father of her two children, and thinks herself in love with him. And he with her.

I enjoyed this book even though some of it was brutal.