Date Published: 08-24-2023
The Missy Box
In 1685 two ten-year-old girls cross the Atlantic, one in the hold of a slave ship, and the other at the Captain’s table of a royal Danish Ship. On St. Thomas their lives will become intertwined, along with that of Mette, the brothel keeper, and Isaac and Pundi, two other wanderers who have landed in this fomenting place at the dawn of its plantation history.
Eighty-five years later, in Copenhagen, this family story is uncovered by Maria Suhm, the way many are, through treasures kept hidden. The Missy Box gives up its secrets with tantalizing reluctance, against a backdrop in 1772 of historical scandal and conspiracy that will bring Denmark to a crisis.
The Missy Box is an imagined story based on the young life of Maria Suhm Wheelock, the wife of the second President of Dartmouth College and her great grandmother, Maria Bourdoux Lasalle, a Huguenot refugee from France.
Set in a time before the interior of American had been discovered by Europeans, the Missy Box recreates a world connected by oceans, peopled by refugees, and the kings who controlled their fates.
My Review
You know how sometimes you find something out and then wish you could “un-find” it away? That’s what began this excellent story. The author discovered that her ancestors owned slaves. To acknowledge this and to give a picture of what one’s life might be like, the author weaves a fictional story threaded throughout with very realistic historical events.
While there is horror here, reading how people were enslaved and treated, there are also sweet times. For just as in bad times, you can always find those special people who believe in doing the right thing.
It isn’t just the story of two young women brought up at different times in different circumstances that I found interesting. It was the true pieces woven in that made me run to the computer to find out more about The Huguenots, slave trade in France, even the scandalous royal affairs in Denmark.
This story switches back and forth between centuries following a young lady of privilege in the late 1600s sailing from France to escape with other French Protestants who are being executed and another young lady sent away from Denmark to safety in the United States.
I am not crazy about novels that shift back and forth between centuries and characters. There were a couple of times I had to turn back to see who I was reading about, but basically, this was a very clear story. Sad and poignant and very readable.
About the Author
Anne Emerson is a writer and a painter in Jamaica Plain Massachusetts. Her award winning first book, Letters from Erastus: Field Notes on Grace was published by Levellers Press in Amherst MA. The Missy Box is an imagined story based on the author's 13th great grandmother, a Huguenot refugee.
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