The Book of Night Women

When Lilith was born, she was feared by many. This is because when Lilith was born she had skin as black as midnight but eyes like an emerald. It was believed that there lives something evil in Lilith because of her green eyes. There were not many blacks born with green eyes. Lilith grew up knowing only one type of life and that is the slave life. Lilith works on a plantation and has been through many masters.

Lilith has gotten close to some of the other slaves and others she can’t get along with. There is one woman in particular called Circe. For some reason Circe does not like Lilith and tries to make trouble for her. Then there is Homer a big, beautiful black woman, who at first Lilith feared but as the years went by, she formed a bond of sorts with.

Lilith’s new master is Robert Quinn. He is different from all the other master’s Lilith has had. He is nicer and seems interested in Lilith. There are a group of women known as the night women, who have been planning for a long time to start a slave revolt and have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to do so. Now that Lilith is older, the group decides to recruit Lilith to help them with their revolt.

The Book of Night Women is a story about deceit, jealously, love, freedom and discovering oneself. Lilith is the main character. Though she only knew the slave life, Lilith knew there was another world outside of the plantation. I was proud of the fact that she did not just settle for what she had. As much as I enjoyed this book, there were at times where it was hard to follow only because of the way the characters spoke. Otherwise except for this fact, The Book of the Night Woman brought me back to the past when this was the first type of books I read for the simple reason that I loved this time era. Mr. James did a very good job with this novel. I plan to check out his next book.

Purchase the book here