Jessup Library Book Club

The Book Club will meet this next Tuesday, October 26th, in Study Room F (727) in the Jessup Library. Please join us as we discuss The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom.

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