Anny P. (wolfnme) reviewed on 8/3/2006 + 3389 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

In her latest novel, Jewell Parker Rhodes gives a voice to the woman who was Frederick Douglass' first wife, Anna--- the wife he referred to as "an old black log." She wanted to know who was this woman and what role she played in his life. Anna is enamored of Freddy as she calls him. He is a slave working on the Baltimore docks when she meets him. A captured man in the body of a proud, fiery man struggling to break the restraints society and life has placed on him. Self-taught, intelligent, well read, he and Anna, an illiterate domestic servant conspire for his freedom.
Freddy is everything to Anna and she risks all to be with this handsome man. She comes to the marriage giving everything she possesses both financially and emotionally, older than he, and a little overweight. She realizes that his abolitionist friends and others think she is not fitting as his wife and then there is Otillie. Otillie is a German Jewess from Europe who is well traveled and educated, blonde, beautiful, slim, and white and she wants Anna's husband. She too risks everything, including her reputation to be with the man she loves------ despite the fact he is married.

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