The daughter of a Virginia plantation's medicine woman, Pheby Delores Brown is protected by her mother's status (and valued by the Master's sister) yet remains enslaved, trapped between two worlds. Her 18th birthday should have brought her freedom and marriage to her true love, but instead she ends up in "Devil's Half-Acre," a notorious jail in Richmond meant to break the bodies and souls of the enslaved, where she must use her wits to survive. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

In this emotionally wrenching pre-Civil War story, Pheby Delores Brown, born a house slave on a Virginia plantation, is the biracial child (then referred to as "high yellow") of a proud African mother and fathered by their white owner. Before her mother's dream for her of freedom and education when she came of age—as promised by her slave-owning father—can be realized, the "spoiled" 16-year-old Pheby becomes a target of the plantation owner's jealous wife, and is sent to a notorious jail where the enslaved are broken and tortured. She becomes the "yellow wife" of the disreputable white jail owner. Pheby lives in fear of her sadistic husband, and her dreams of freedom and protecting those she loves grow more desperate with the birth of each child, and the passing years.VERDICT This well-researched and intensely moving fifth novel by Johnson (And Then There Was Me) is perfect for fans of historical fiction with strong female characters such as The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom and Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Book clubs looking for #OwnVoices authors will be powerfully impressed by this story of a lesser-known aspect of the history of slavery in the American South.—Laurie Cavanaugh, Thayer P.L., Braintree, MA

Johnson's rich latest (after And Then There Was Me) follows a mixed-race young woman, enslaved by her father, through a series of betrayals and abuses. Pheby Brown has been promised her emancipation at 18 by her father, Jacob Bell, the white owner of a plantation in Charles City, Va. Pheby chooses to remain at the Bell plantation because of Jacob's promise, even after her lover, Essex, escapes to the north in 1850, when she is 17. After a carriage accident kills Pheby's mother and injures Jacob, Pheby is at the mercy of Jacob's vindictive, mean-spirited wife, Delphina, who sells Pheby to jailer Rubin Lapier. At the jail, Pheby gives birth to Essex's son, Monroe, and afterwards Rubin coerces Pheby to sleep with him in exchange for keeping Monroe. As the years pass, Pheby bears four of Rubin's daughters. When Essex is captured and ends up at the jail in 1857, Pheby plots to get him and Monroe to freedom. While some scenes feel a bit melodramatic, the author brilliantly depicts Pheby's maternal drive to create a better life for all of her children despite a series of brutally difficult compromises. Despite the occasional creaky plot turns, Johnson achieves a powerful, unflinching account of determination in the face of oppression. Agents: Cherise Fisher and Wendy Sherman, Wendy Sherman Asso. (Jan.)