Book 18 - "Every slave story is a ghost story."

Book 18: Receive Me Falling by Erika Robuck

Receive Me Falling
(click here to purchase)

Description: Every slave story is a ghost story. The haunting words of an historian and former cane worker on the Caribbean island of Nevis launch Meghan Owen on her quest to unlock the secrets of an abandoned sugar plantation and its ghosts. After Meg's parents die in a car accident on the night of her engagement party, she calls off her wedding, takes leave of her job in Annapolis, and travels to land she's inherited on Nevis. A series of discoveries in an old plantation house on the property, Eden, set her on a search for the truth surrounding the shameful past of her ancestors, their slaves, and the tragedy that resulted in the fall of the plantation and its inhabitants. Through a crushing phone call with her lawyer, Meg learns that her father's estate was built on stolen money, and is being sued by multiple sources. She is faced with having to sell the land and plantation home, and deal with the betrayal she feels from her deceased father. In alternating chapters, the historical drama of the Dall family unfolds. Upon the arrival of British abolitionists to the hedonistic 19th century plantation society, Catherine Dall is forced to choose between her lifestyle and the scandal of deserting her family. An angry confrontation with Catherine's slave, Leah, results in the girl's death, but was it murder or suicide? Hidden texts, scandalous diaries, antique paintings, and confessional letters help Meghan Owen uncover the secrets of Eden and put the ghosts to rest. [Amazon]

Meghan Owen is doing quite well for herself. She has a good job, a wedding just around the corner, and extremely wealthy parents. But on the night of her engagement party, her parents are killed in a car accident, leaving Meg in a world turned upside down.

While Meg looks through her father's office, she finds that he owns an old plantation on a large amount of land on the Carribean island of Nevis. As if this isn't enough to deal with, she learns that her father has been laundering money away from clients and is now being sued for over 60 million dollars. She calls off her wedding and takes a trip to the Carribean, hoping to sell the old Dall plantation and all of the land with the hopes of being able to pay off her father's debt.

But while Meg is in Nevis, she gets the feeling that she is not alone. Upon exploring the old plantation mansion, she plunges into a search-and-find on the plantation's dark past, one that is continuously calling out to her.
Written in the same beautiful language as Call Me Zelda, Robuck presents readers with two stories in one. The chapters alternate: all odd chapters deal with Meg in the present, and all even chapters take us back to the early nineteenth century where we meet Christine Dall, a strong-willed woman who practically runs her aging father's plantation. Sugar plantations are booming and slavery is a way of life. But between working alongside her always-drunk father, fighting off the dashing Edward who longs to marry Christine just so he can take over her plantation, and contemplating the pros and cons of the new abolitionist movement sweeping across all of Europe, Christine slowly begins losing her grip on life. She also learns that she is much more in sync with the slaves on her plantation than she thought.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel (though not as much as Call Me Zelda, as I believe that it will be hard to top) and grew to respect the female characters greatly. I was disheartened to learn of the plantation's disintegration, but I believe that Meg was able to bring peace to the crumbling plantation and it's inhabitants.

If you found Frederick Douglass's writings, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or any other works that use slavery as their subject, then you should absolutely give this novel a chance. I've always been fascinated by slavery's history, and this novel really put the extremeties of slavery into a modern-day perspective.


To visit Erika, follow these links:

Erika Robuck SITE
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Erika Robuck (author
of Call Me Zelda)



UPCOMING BOOK: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
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