Junie
| Industrial Age |
|---|
 Junie |
| Content Warning |
|---|
| physical abuse, racism, suicide, grief, death of a sibling/death of a parent |
American History > Industrial Age > African American History
GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • A young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost, navigating truths about love, friendship, and power as the Civil War looms.
“The richly textured prose quickly pulled me into [Junie’s] treacherous yet magical world.”—Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake
Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.
When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.
With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?
Emily's Review
This book blew me away. I loved Junie as a character. The author loosely based Junie on her great-great-great-grandmother, who escaped from slavery at the start of the Civil War.
I think what I loved most about this book was that Junie was such a dynamic character. When we meet her, she is naive, almost content with her life at Belleriene. She's the favorite of Violet, daughter of the master, who has taught her to read and write, she loves wandering the woods and daydreaming, even writing poetry. But the death of her sister Minnie begins to weigh heavily on her. When Minnie's ghost appears to her in the woods with quests to fulfill, she begins to uncover some darker truths about life on the plantation. Through these quests, we see Junie grow and fully realize what staying enslaved will mean for her. There's a really great line about having to live in the margins - having to find small bits of happiness around the horrors that surround you, just to survive.
This is a book about grief, about being brave and asserting yourself even when it's dangerous to do so. I loved seeing her relationship with Violet - who is also a bit naive for most of this story - and how the two find ways to live in the margins of their lives in different ways.
It was a really beautiful story filled with resilience and hope.
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