The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

 Sunday, Mar. 21, 2021--San Antonio

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom is a book gifted to me by friends who had read it.  It takes place on a plantation in Virginia in the late 1700s/early 1800s.  Unlike other plantation novels that emphasize the relationships between the white owners and the black slaves, this one brings in a major character who leaves Ireland on a ship with her family which is contracted to be indentured servants in America.  When her parents both die during the passage, the captain, who uses his ship to financially support his family plantation, brings the girl to live out her indentured servitude at the plantation.  Female slaves there fall into two main categories--house slaves and field slaves.  The girl is assigned to live in the kitchen house, an outbuilding where the cooking takes place, and to assist there with cooking plus having chores assigned to her in the big house.  Unlike other whites on the plantation, she lives with the slaves who become like family to her.  This sets up a contrast in outlook and reaction for her vs. the white family members and the white overseer.  The story covers approximately 40 years.  So many of the turns in the story are based on a persons making wrong assumptions and persons not speaking up to clarify the situation that has caused the wrong assumption.  Almost everything that goes wrong in the story is due to this.  Eventually, I found myself wanting to yell at some of the characters for the poor decisions they were making.  They story is easy to read and moves at a fast enough pace, but I lost respect for it as the poor decisions piled up toward the end.  I rated it 3 1/2 stars out of 5.