"Wench" is a historical novel that takes the reader into a unique setting and a precarious point in time. The place is Tawawa House, a resort in Southern Ohio, and the time is the 1850s. The four main characters are slave women who travel to the resort every summer with their white masters. The story is told from the point of view of Lizzie, an educated slave who has a very ambivalent relationship with her master, Nathan Drayle.

The book begins one summer when the slaves at the resort are joined by Mawu, an mysterious woman from Louisiana who stirs up trouble at the resort with her talk of escaping to freedom. The southern Ohio setting is very important to the story, as the women are technically staying in the free North but are still required to fulfill their roles as slaves. Each of them gets to see and experience little tastes of freedom but they know at the end of the summer, they will each return to their Southern plantations and nothing will be different.

The second part of the book takes the reader back to the early days of Lizzie's complicated relationship with Drayle at their plantation. We learn why she has developed feelings of love for him but is also able to hate his role as her master at the same time.

Finally, the women and their masters return to Tawawa House the following summer to an atmosphere of unrest. The resort is starting to fall apart as less Northerners want to associate with the Southern guests and their slaves. Each of the women has important decisions to make as changes are beginning to sweep the region and the culture.

This book didn't have a single, sweeping plot that left me engrossed from start to finish, but I enjoyed immersing myself in the descriptions of the complicated characters and the tension-fraught setting in place and time. A great read for fans of the Civil War era and books dealing with the emotional legacy of slavery.