The American Daughters

I have fallen in love with….

I love stories that re-tell American history in a way that, had we not always written the past with a White male pen, we’d know it might have happened this way. The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin, which retells the years in New Orleans leading up to the Civil War, is the latest novel I love in this category. 

You can assume several things about Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s fiction. It will be well-written. You will experience the characters as real people. It will make an impact. He will add elements you didn’t know the story needed to take it to a whole ‘nother level, but, thankfully, he did. Beyond these givens, never assume anything about Ruffin’s work. For—ha, ha, another given—you will be surprised by what you read.

This is what I mean by making an impact. For centuries our country maintained a complex legal system that treated people as property. We often refer to this system without even thinking about it. In The American Daughters, when the enslaver calls Ady his property, he sounds a fool and ridiculous. This is because, from Ruffin, we know Ady. We know she could never be property. So the novel is not just a new way to believe in our history, but also a tearing down of our old beliefs. All in a story that I picked up the whenever I had a free moment, eager to read.

Thank you, Mr. Ruffin, for this book I love. 

ps If you’re wondering like I was about the “The” in the title, it signals a genius plot. That’s all I’ll say.