In this novel, Kent Leslie retells the story of Amanda America Dickson. Dickson background begins to being born as a mulatto, which is a mixture of races. Dickson was born in 1894, where slavery was very prevalent and very profitable and it was very common for masters to sleep with the servants whether a house or field servant regardless of gender. In Dickson case, her father David Dickson was one of the richest plantation owners in Hancock County, but the abnormality of Dickson’s case was that her white father took her in and raised her as if she was apart of the white community. Leslie did an excellent job of exploiting the great aspects of Dickson’s achievements and accolades throughout her life and career. One decisive argument Leslie …show more content…
Amanda Dickson is not portrayed as an “abolitionist that uses her father’s wealth to free the slaves he owned”, she was raised by her white grandmother and became well versed in the ways of etiquette in white society. Which brings into question if slavery was based on racism, or just the fact that Africans was just unlucky to be caught up in the slave trade in America. Also, the fact that Amanda is the result of a master-slave relationship usual discredits she will be successful in the world on her own. Fortunately, Dickson maintain her father’s legacy, and even in his will he shows his respect for Amanda as well.
To critique the novel, it has many strengths and weakness which only some are blatantly visible. One of the novel’s strengths are that it helps emphasize one of the South’s wealthiest figures in the nineteenth century who is usually overlooked. Dickson’s history is usually overlooked because it is not an inspirational story to most. A weakness of the novel is the premise of the novel as a whole. The book review from Journal of Southern History (JSTOR) has an accurate description of the question as to why Leslie decided to write about a figure who does not influence a lot of