The Indigo Girl--A Review

If you like historical fiction, then you'll be delighted with The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd. The book is a fictionalized version about a few years in the life of an actual woman who lived in South Carolina in the 1700's. The book covers the years 1739-1744. The author uses actual letters written by Eliza Lucas as she weaves the young woman's story. The letters were part of Natasha Boyd's research but she also incorporated them into the book.

Eliza's family owned three small plantations. When she was only 16, her father left her in charge of running the family holdings when he sets sail for the Caribbean islands to pursue his military ambitions. Eliza has been his helper and he has no qualms about leaving the young woman in charge. As time goes on, Eliza does her best but her father mortgages one plantation after another to further his military career and creating one financial difficulty after another for the family in South Carolina.

Her mother wants nothing more that to return to England, the original home of the family and the country where Eliza's two brothers are living and being educated. Eliza has grand plans to make the plantations profitable which will maker her father proud of her. She comes up with an idea to grow and process indigo as there is a market for it overseas. Knowing little about the crop or how to make the dye, she seeks help from a neighbor and asks her father to send one of her childhood friends who knows about the crop to help her. That friend is also a slave owned by a man who is a fraud but passes himself off as an expert on indigo.

Eliza's mother cares nothing about the business side of the plantation. Her only aim is to find a husband for Eliza and she doesn't care about his age or character. Eliza resists the idea of marriage over and over.

The story, written in first person, moves among Eliza's women friends, the slaves on the plantation where she and her mother and younger sister live, and Charles Pinckney, a lawyer whom she admires along with his wife. Eliza, at 16, is young and naive with grandiose plans. She is thwarted over and over, despite the help of her childhood friend, Ben, and a few other loyal slaves. 

Her feelings for Ben bewilder and frighten her especially when he rebuffs her attempt to rekindle their friendship.

The frontispiece on this book, published in September 2017, tells us that the story is about romance, intrigue, hidden friendships, threats, ambition, betrayal and sacrifice. All of that, besides being based on a true story, makes for an enticing read. I found myself stealing moments here and there to continue reading. 

Being a writer myself, one of the things that appeals to me in a book is lovely prose and Natasha Boyd offers plenty of that. Some of the phrases stopped me long enough to read them again.. One example is I was a butterfly pinned by my wings to the canvas of my mistakes. 

I found this book on the New Books shelf at my local library. Definitely pleased that I brought it home to read.