THE MISTRESS OF COLLINGWOOD

DeMouy’s historical novel centers around a forbidden love triangle in antebellum Virginia.

In 1858, Diana McDonald weds Stephen Cutler in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Diana’s days will be spent in a manor house called Collingwood. Collingwood is on a vast property, though it is not like the “elaborate plantation houses in the cotton states.” The estate includes enslaved people, in numbers Diana is not used to. One among them, a woman named Jewel, is none too pleased with Stephen’s wedding—Stephen and Jewel have an ongoing sexual relationship. The two have a son together named Tom, but Stephen does not acknowledge Tom as his child. (Tom learns to read and develops a friendship with Stephen’s invalid brother, Thaddeus.) As Diana adjusts to her life as Mrs. Cutler, there are rumblings of change elsewhere in the country: It has been decades since Nat Turner’s rebellion, but John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry stirs up new concerns. Then there is the election of Abraham Lincoln as president; clearly, with a “Black Republican” like Lincoln in office, even greater tumult is afoot. The story paints a memorable picture of a large Virginia property in the 1800s, with its various moving parts and complex relationships. Firsthand historical sources are quoted, adding to the verisimilitude—an entry from a woman’s diary tells of taboo activities: “Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds.” However, the dialogue is not as revealing; characters tend to state flatly what they are doing, as when Stephen says, “I must be on my way. There’s a meeting of local planters at Belfort this afternoon.” Still, tension mounts effectively as the reader knows that something violent will come of the domestic situation at Collingwood, a dread reflected in the nation at large.

A tension-filled look at a time period destined to come to a bloody end.