Benjamin January in the first three novels
in Barbara Hambly’s historical
series about a free man of color in 1930s
New Orleans is an amateur detective pressed into service to save himself, a
relative, or a friend. In Sold Down The River, the fourth
novel in the series, Benjamin, in a sense, becomes a professional investigator when
he is offered payment for his services.
Simon Fourchet, the master who owned
Benjamin, his mother, his father, and his sister on the Bellefleur plantation,
has come to New Orleans to ask Benjamin’s help in finding out who is trying to
kill him on his new plantation. Two events on the plantation convinced Fourchet
that someone is trying to kill him. His butler Gilles, who had the habit of
sneaking a nip of the master’s whiskey, died from poison after his recent nip.
The slave Reuben died in the mill fire that Fourchet believes was deliberately
started by someone who wants to ruin him. He offers Benjamin $500 for his
services.
Benjamin hates the cruel slave master who
broke his ribs when he was six and stuffed his mother Livia in a barrel as
punishment for disobedience. St. Denis Janvier bought the family, except for
the father, from Fourchet, freed them, and Livia became his mistress. Benjamin
and Olympe took his surname. Janvier made sure Benjamin got the best musical
and medical education.
He can’t understand why Livia wants him to help
Fourchet simply so he can repay the $100 he owes her. However, he realizes the
$500 will allow him to move out of her house into a place of his own. The
opportunity to escape her nagging and arguments by his friend Rose and his sister
Olympe persuade Benjamin to take the job. They point out that if the culprit is
not caught, the white planters in the area might decide that a slave rebellion
is in the making and go on a killing rampage. Thus, Benjamin could prevent a
possible massacre.
Benjamin goes undercover as a field slave
on Fourchet’s Mon Triomphe plantation. He knows how to be subservient and not reveal
his intelligence to the white planters. But the other slaves are a different
matter, for anyone of them, especially the house slaves, might discover he
isn’t who he pretends to be and expose him. Another danger is a slave trader
might see the six feet three inch tall, 200 pound Benjamin January as a
profitable piece of merchandise—the perfect field slave—and sell him up the
river to the owner of a cotton plantation.
Hambly continues
her complex plotting in this novel depicting the hard life of slave on a sugar plantation, especially for the slaves of
a brutal, tyrannical master, and the internal slave trade—slaves from Louisiana
are sold to the cotton planters up river. The number of suspects further
complicates the plot: Fourchet’s neighbor, all the slaves on the plantation,
Fourchet’s two sons, his young wife, and the wife of his son Robert are
suspects.
To give the plot authenticity
and relief from the cruelty and violence depicted in the novel, she adds some
humor in Sold Down The River through the field slave Harry, a trickster
who barters goods with other slaves on other plantations. She also shows the
men relaxing and joking, playing the dozens, a game I played as a boy and that
is still played today. In the game, each player insults the other by talking
about his relatives, especially his mother or sister. Benjamin secures his
place among the slaves when he displays his skill at the game.
What I liked most
about the novel is the irony of an ex-slave going to work for his former master
who agrees to pay him.
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