Bonnie Stanard: 6 books

A bold, mesmerizing novel that interweaves the story of two slaves with the characters in Bonnie Stanard’s previous novels, Master of Westfall Plantation and Kedzie, Saint Helena Island Slave. Slavery was a system that separated black families. Even benevolent plantation owners in the old South were...

St. Helena Island slaves speak English, but African drums still throb in their veins; they hear the whispers of their ancestors. From this arises a girl of unusual strength, whose pampered life ends when her kindly mistress dies, and she moves to a shanty in the quarters. Kedzie soon learns that the...

It is 1857 and Tilmon Goodwyn wields absolute power over his island plantation but hardly makes a profit because of his profligate spending and gambling. He secures financial benefits from his wealthy widowed mother, but when she trifles with an opportunistic artist, Tilmon meets head-on with a threat...

In Dust, as 1944 WWII’s autumn becomes winter, we experience Christmas in South Carolina through the eyes of twelve year-old Lily. Because she can’t always understand the meaning of what she sees and hears, we learn that beyond Lily’s senses there are secrets and adult human drama she is not privy...

Westfall, Slave to King Cotton strays far from Old South nostalgia by giving us a multi-dimensional picture of life on a plantation. It questions the "realities" of what we read about the South of 1858, where an aristocracy was based on race and depended on slavery. We see Westfall's owner Tilmon Goodwyn...

Westfall Plantation, a gray-eyed home of destiny, was dual to the core. It was yoked with the extremes of luxury and poverty. Typical of other plantations on St. Helena Island, its big house was a showcase of symmetry and elegance. By contrast, the slave cabins were clapboard hovels with stick and mud...