The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

In 1791, Lavinia, an orphaned Irish immigrant, finds herself in the kitchen house of a Virginia plantation.  The slaves who live there become her family in this story where the notion of family is challenged in every way imaginable.  Lavinia shares the narration of the story with Belle, whose slave mother died when she was young and whose father is the master of the big house. From the very first chapter, which is dated 1810, the reader is forced to address the sense of impending doom.  Yet in the kitchen house there is such caring in the face of such horrible abuse.  As the notions of race and insanity and isolation play out in this complicated ancestry, the reader is drawn into a world where the rules are clear but the reality blurred.  As each evil victory prevails, each opportunity for good is missed,  there is a sense of fatalism that can only be overcome by the powerful need for these strong wonderful characters to win in the end.