Conjure Women

FREEDOMTIME

1867

The black baby s crying wormed and bloomed. It woke Rue by halves from her sleep so that through the first few strains of the sound she could not be sure when or where she was, but soon the feeble cry strengthened, like a desperate knocking at her front door, and she came all the way awake, and knew that she was needed, again.

She unwound herself from her thin linen sheet. If there were dreams, she d lost them now that she d stood up. There was only the crying, not so loud as it was strange, unsettling. She smoothed her nightmare hair and made ready her face. Stepped out from her cabin, barefooted.

At the center of the town, between the gathering of low cabins that sat close and humble, Rue could make out the collection of folks, like herself, who d been drawn from their sleep by the haunting cry. Anxious, bedraggled, they emerged to suppose at that unearthly sound. It was a moonless night, the clouds colluding to block out the stars, and the crowd knitted itself tightly in a weave of black whisperings.

You hearin that, Miss Rue? one of them said when she approached.

What little light there was streamed down from behind the crowd, hiding them, illuminating Rue. She couldn t make out their faces for the darkness but replied just the same. Can t help but hearin . That some poor sufferin somethin ?

As she walked, already she was holding herself straighter, prouder. It s what they were expecting. No matter how weary she was feeling on the inside, she knew she had to walk easy, like she were floating, same as her mama used to do. Rue s magic ought to be absolute, she knew, not come to them sleepwalking and unsure, or it wasn t magic at all.

Never heard nothin come close to that cry.

Ain t no creature.

That s one a Jonah s li l uns.

Rue knew they suspected already what child it was. That wrong child, born backward in a caul, a bath of black.

Jonah himself was opening the front door of his cabin and stepping out

Afia Atakora was born in the United Kingdom and raised in New Jersey, where she now lives. She graduated from New York University and has an MFA from Columbia University, where she was the recipient of the De Alba Fellowship. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers.

Afia Atakora brings the Civil War South to life so beautifully with Conjure Women, a heartbreaking joy to read. Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls

If you are grieving for Toni Morrison, Afia Atakora is the young writer to read now: the kind of historical novelist who makes you believe she must have somehow seen the places she describes and known these characters herself. Her astonishing debut takes the reader to a Reconstruction-era Southern plantation, where two little girls the enslaved child of the local healer and the planter s cloistered daughter become unlikely friends. Conjure Women illuminates an unfamiliar corner of Civil War history and brings to life an indelible character whose talents, from midwifery to voodoo, will yield her own unconventional path to power and freedom. Nell Freudenberger, author of Lost and Wanted

[An] affecting story. Newsweek  

In Conjure Women Afia Atakora masterfully centers two generations of women, folk healers who carry the secrets of their community while bearing the brunt of its antebellum past and its reconstructed present. Telling a gripping story at once grand and intimate, Atakora renders humanity in all its beautiful fits and flaws. Page after page, her voice announces itself like a thunderclap. The women in this novel will blessedly stick with you long after the last word has been read. Caleb Johnson, author of Treeborne

Secrets, heartache, and healing fill this story spanning two generations of women living in the South before and after the Civil War. Atakora s writing grips you from the first page of this soon-to-be-published novel. It s no surprise that she is being hailed as a successor to Toni Morrison. The Week

Conjure Women is a beautifully written novel that explores bondage and freedom through the lives of vividly drawn women who will stay with you long after you ve turned