Once Quinton and Suga (now Sarah) arrived in England she was still not tested in any fundamental ways. Hmm? Once they arrived at the plantation where Suga's mother was being held, the transaction was settled in a matter of moments. Turns out that he too married a former slave. He had to secure the assistance of a shipping magnate to carry out the plan. One plot point revolved around the purchase of Suga's mother.
Have to meet someone who might not like her? Make that person ill or poor or in some other way in desperate need of her services. Every time she had a challenge she had a cheat. She learned to read, perfected her healing skills, and learned etiquette. She had to transition from an illiterate slave to a cultured lady in a very short time. Numerous hurdles were thrust in Suga's path. The plot itself showed tremendous promise. Quinton was good to Suga, but he showed little true passion toward her. She need not, and most often was not, in his presence. He was happy knowing she was in the vicinity. According to his own avowals, he loved having her around to attend to things he didn't want to take care of. He could study, practice medicine, and handle his other obligations because Suga was taking care of the household duties. Quinton continually stated that having Suga around allowed him to attend to other things. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the connection between the two leads. She gave plausible reasons for Quinton's decision to keep the slave, and for Suga wanting to stay. The author actually handled this quite well. I wondered what would entice him to keep her. A white man who professes to be adamantly against slavery is gifted with a slave.
I am almost afraid to break the spell by reading anything else of hers, and am still a little befuddled about which of my shelves to put this book on. I highly recommend this book to anyone who might have the same misgivings I had. There were some anomalies in the dialogue and a few aspects of the story that were fairytale-like, but they were very, very minimal and did not detract from the overall feat of making it believable that a strong and genuine attachment had formed between these two incredibly unlikely lovers. She had a wonderful parallel in his experience to explain why he was seemingly immune to the sensibilities of the time which dictated that those of African descent were necessarily inferior to their white masters. But Mercedes Keyes did a masterful job of navigating this very difficult tale to tell (and sell) of a white man and a "fancy" (slave bred to be the 'bed wench' of her master)falling in love.
So it was with some trepidation that I decided to read 'The Fancy'. That whole 'Jefferson in Paris' yarn made me puke, for example. I have strong feelings about the antebellum period and hate (yes, I used the word 'hate') the fluffy period books that somehow suggest that liaisons between female slaves and their masters were in some way voluntary.
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