The Kitchen House - Kathleen Grissom

I read The Kitchen House too close to reading The Help. The two stories are extremely different and set in completely different time frames, which may speak to a white reviewers inability to seperate two black stories from each other. Where The Help had some likable white characters, The Kitchen House had few. The main characters of The Kitchen House are a black woman, born of the father of the current master of the house but too black to pass for white so she's raised as a servant, and a white orphan from Ireland who joins the family when she is four but is relegated to the kitchen and raised with the servants for most of her life. Eventually the white girl, Lavinia, is educated by t master's wife and takes her place among white society. The plantation's family is dysfunctional to say the least. The master travels until his death, handing the family business over to his troubled son. The son, not realizing the pretty black girl in the kitchen is his sister, rapes her and then drives the family business into the ground but not before marrying Lavinia and wreaking havoc in his path.
If you are a history buff and don't mind reading about death, destruction, and the pain of slavery this book may be for you.