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May 04, 2014ryner rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
The House Girl simultaneously tells the stories of two women separated by time, place and culture. Josephine is a house girl, a slave on a failing Virginia plantation. With her mistress in rapidly failing health, Josephine begins to orchestrate her escape into the sympathetic arms of the Underground Railroad. Lina is a present-day New York lawyer who begins work on an assignment involving slavery reparations, and her mission is to find the "perfect" living descendant to serve as plaintiff in the case. An emerging controversy surrounding the authorship of a collection of antebellum paintings may be her most promising lead. Through the first two thirds of the book I was interested but not necessarily wowed. Then things really started to get interesting! I'm a sucker for stories involving or solving historical mysteries. When the tale took an interesting twist with merely a few dozen pages to go, I eagerly wondered how the author would manage to resolve this new question mark. In addition, there is such a high level of detail that I had to remind myself a number of times while reading that this was a work of fiction. Recommended!