I was especially excited to read this after visiting the town where this story took place. Historical figure Eliza Lucas was an 18th century plantation owner who at the age of 16, pioneers the cultivation and trade of indigo in pre-Revolutionary War South Carolina.

I learned on a Gullah Geechee (Creole descendants of enslaved Africans) tour in Charleston that Lucas taught her enslaved humans how to read in exchange for learning how to procure blue dye from the delicate indigo plant. I'm not sure when this became the popular narrative, perhaps after the book was written, because it was indicated in the author's note but only hinted at in the story published in 2017.

Full disclosure, I was always going to be hypercritical going into a slave-owner narrative. Sadly this didn't rise to the levels of transparency and accountability I had hoped.