This book is the story of two intertwined lives: Handful, a slave living in early-nineteenth-century Charleston, South Carolina; and Sarah, the daughter of one of Charleston’s elite families. Over the course of thirty or so years, Sarah will grow up to be a pre-eminent abolitionist and an early advocate for women’s rights, and Handful will play a pivotal role in Denmark Vesey’s ultimately failed plot to overthrow the white power structure of Charleston. Both of them are held captive by a society whose rules and norms are overwhelmingly restrictive, although of course Handful’s imprisonment is all the more suppressive than Sarah’s.

The twin themes of flight and quilting, if a bit obvious for a narrative about slave women, are nevertheless wonderfully threaded through the entire story. I particularly enjoyed the device of alternating perspective, which mimics the pattern of alternating squares of cloth on some quilts. (Or in any case, that’s the intended effect.) For all that, I found the related theme of storytelling, illustrated most sharply by Handful’s sister’s song (“if you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you’re going”) to be a little on the cheesy side, and reminded me (not in a good way) of The Secret Life of Bees.

In addition to being an interesting story in its own right, this book illuminates the lives of two trailblazing women in the sisters Grimke, and imagines the life of an equally fascinating (though figuratively and in some cases literally more invisible) pair of sisters in Handful and her sister. It’s quite well done.