Jessup Library Book Club

The Kitchen House is a powerful novel about life in the 1790s on a tobacco plantation in Virginia. Grissom unmasks the culture and reality of the antebellum South through voices of slaves and white indentured servants. In each character, the reader is drawn to the vivid portrayals of respect for humanity, sadness, fear, love, and tragedy in a horrible system of disrespect and terror. The characters touch your heart and it is difficult to rest one's eyes from chapter to chapter. Grissom's research into slavery and the intolerable conditions of the antebellum South is evident throughout the novel. Her tale of a white Irish girl growing up with black slaves in a kitchen house separated from the white plantation owners tells an interesting story of love and exposes the readers to the simple things in life that matter the most, love and respect for our fellow human beings.
Linda Cahill