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By Edward P. Jones
Recommended by Oprah Winfrey
Set in Manchester County, Virginia, 20 years before the Civil War began, Edward P. Jones's debut novel, The Known World, is a
masterpiece of overlapping plot lines, time shifts, and heartbreaking details of life under slavery. Caldonia Townsend is an
educated black slaveowner, the widow of a well-loved young farmer named Henry, whose parents had bought their own freedom, and
then freed their son, only to watch him buy himself a slave as soon as he had saved enough money. Although a fair and gentle
master by the standards of the day, Henry Townsend had learned from former master about the proper distance to keep from one's
property. After his death, his slaves wonder if Caldonia will free them. When she fails to do so, but instead breaches the code
that keeps them separate from her, a little piece of Manchester County begins to unravel. Impossible to rush through, The Known
World is a complex, beautifully written novel with a large cast of characters, rewarding the patient reader with unexpected
connections, some reaching into the present day.
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