The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson

 

Title:  The House of Eve

Author:  Sadeqa Johnson

Narrated by:  Ariel Blake and Nicole Lewis

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 10 hours and 27 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

Do you like book covers that show faces?  I love this book cover, but it goes with the trend of having a headless person.  The other trend I notice is the back of someone walking away.  I think it's so you can imagine yourself as the character.  I like covers that show faces and also those that don’t.  I love the color of the dress on this cover.

The House of Eve is a riveting new historical fiction novel that I couldn’t put down.  I was listening to it on audiobook and I had a hard time stopping the story to do things like work, eat, or talk to my family.  The House of Eve is set in 1948 and is the story of two very women. Ruby is a fifteen year old in Philadelphia.  She is working on getting good grades and a scholarship to be the first person in her family to go to college.  It’s hard work as her single mother doesn’t care to raise her and cares more about her boyfriend of the month.  When Ruby meets Shimmy, sparks fly and she will make a decision that could potentially impact her life forever.

Eleanor is attending Howard University in Washington DC and is the pride her family from Ohio.  She has the dream of becoming an archivist at a library.  When she meets the handsome William Pride, she is instantly smitten.  William is from an elite and rich family in Washington DC.  Eleanor feels that William’s mother Rose will never accept her. Will having a baby bring her into the family more?

I really enjoyed the two different alternating narratives.  Ruby grew up in poverty with a single mother, while Eleanor had a more middle class upbringing with two parents.  They both have ambitions, and they both have to work hard for what they want.  I don’t want to ruin the story for others, but I loved the realistic challenges that the two women faced including pregnancy, racism, social pressures, body image issues, etc.

I also loved learning about the social scene of elite African Americans in Washington DC in the late 1940s.  It was new to me and so interesting.  There was also a section of the book that was disturbing showing what happened to unwed mothers who were sent to religious homes for unwed mothers.  I can’t stop thinking about this and how these mothers were treated.

Author Sadeqa Johnson previously wrote another historical fiction novel that I thought was excellent, Yellow Wife.  I LOVED that there was a connection to Yellow Wife at the end of The House of Eve.  It made me want to clap.  It was perfect.  I also read that this was a personal story for Johnson as her grandmother found herself a 14-year old unwed mother.

Ariel Blake and Nicole Lewis were great and engaging narrators.  The story was told through both Ruby and Eleanor’s point of view.  Each narrator told the story of each character and it made it so it seemed like their own personal story.  I enjoyed it.

 

The Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

 

Title:  The Yellow Wife

Author: Sadeqa Johnson

Read by:  Robin Miles

Publisher: Simon & Shuster Audio

Length: Approximately 9 hours and 31 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Shuster Audio.  Thank-you! 

The Yellow Wife is a historical fiction novel that swept me away into the story.  The main character, Pheby Delores Brown is an admirable strong woman fictional heroine.

Pheby has grown up relatively sheltered on a plantation. Born in 1832 to a mulatto mother and the planation owner, she was taught to read and play the piano by Miss Sally, her father’s sister.  After his marriage and Miss Sally’s death, things take a turn for the worse for Pheby and her mother.  Her mistress hates her and tries to make her life difficult.  Things come to a head when her mistress sells her after her father is involved in a carriage accident.

Pheby finds herself at the notorious Devil’s Half Acre, a jail for African American slaves in Richmond, Virginia.  Slaves are brought to this jail to be punished and to be sold.  It’s an area of great suffering.  Pheby is selected by the cruel owner of the jail to become his “yellow wife.”  How will Pheby survive?

Pheby’s story was engrossing and terrifying.  I have been reading a lot of World War II fiction the last few years and her story reminded me of concentration camp survivors.  Terrible choices had to be made to survive.  People were treated as they never should be treated.  The immorality and cruelty of slavery was on full display in this novel.  I can’t imagine a world where a man lives with his wife but sleeps with his slaves and has children with them as well.  This man owns his own children.  A man that owns his “yellow wife” and loves her but can treat her with great cruelty.  It was a strange world that still has consequences today.

The story is told from Pheby’s point of view and she is a great character. I loved Pheby’s love for her children.  I loved that she was survivor and trying to figure out how to not only make it herself, but for her children to have the best life possible.

Pheby also had a tragic romance story.  She grew up with and loved Essex Henry.  She became pregnant with his child right before she was sold.  He had to run north for his own horrific reasons.  They are reunited in the future, and Pheby has to make a hard choice that is the best for all she holds dear.  It makes me sad just thinking about it and all of the people who were unable to stay together with their loved ones.

Sadeqa Johnson had a great note at the end which gave the details of the real history of the Devil’s Half Acre and of the real woman who Pheby is based upon.  It was riveting history that I had never heard about.

Robin Miles was a great narrator of this audiobook and was Pheby Delores Brown to me.

Overall, The Yellow Wife is an engrossing historical fiction novel that shows the hard choices that were made to survive the world of slavery.