The Wedding Gift

"If I were you, I wouldn't make any plans for the rest of the day. You have in your hands a story of the tangled motives and self-destructive passions when whites and blacks became this close during the time of slavery--all told at a pell mell pace." --Tom Wolfe, New York Times bestselling and Award-winning author of Back to Blood

"Bodden wraps some of the most complex issues facing the world today, slavery, racism, misogyny, and violence in an unflinching tall tale about an American family that is black and white. This compelling and fierce historical novel, where the slave master gives his white daughter his black daughter as a wedding gift, is set in the big house of a wealthy plantation before the Civil War and is based on a court case from the 1840s in Talladega, Alabama." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"Fascinating, intriguing--a great story!" --Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House

"The WEDDING GIFT is powerful and absorbing. Ms. Bodden's story-telling skills are on fine display in this intricately-plotted novel as she unflinchingly transports the reader to the most tragic, brutal time in the country's past. The characters are exceptionally well-rendered; the sense of who they are lingers beyond the last page. The author astutely captures the complexities of the relationships--especially between the enslaved black women and the oppressed white women. Also masterfully captured here is the boundless quest to live fully free." --Diane McKinney-Whetstone, author of Tumbling

"The strength of the novel is its slave narrative tone and its ability to demonstrate the pain of being owned by another human being. Many have heard of slavery; few know this story. It's too important to overlook." --Daniel Black, author of Twelve Gates to the City