"There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below."

This is the third story I read from Morrison and I can honestly say that I am 100% a fan. Even though this book is short, it accomplished everything Morrison wanted. It is a masterpiece. The prose was spectacular. A sense of horror weaved its way through all of the changing narratives, hanging in the backdrop. I cried at the end. It's very hard for me to write a concise review, but I will try my best.

There are five main characters living together on a farm: Florens, Jacob Vaark (or "Sir"), Rebekah (Jacob's wife and "Mistress"), Sorrow, and Lina. Regardless of how they got there, they are coexisting despite their cultural and racial differences. I think that's what Morrison wanted to really show. In the Old World, it wasn't just Blacks versus Whites. It was more complicated than that. There were Blacks and Whites coexisting with the Native Americans. And these groups also carried customs they'd picked up from other cultures. So it's not as simple as "Black" and "White" like we'd been taught. It was a mix of nationalities, customs, and religions.

In this world, there is chaos and disorder. People use their religion to crookedly attain wealth and separate themselves from those they deem as "savages." We have poor people (not just Africans) being taken advantage of. In exchange for their freedom or just a "safe" place to sleep, they have to often sacrifice their dignity and (in the case of the women) their bodies. We see hypocritical religious people who harm those they deem inferior. We see religious people trying to extend grace upon the inferior--but that grace only goes so far. We can see an example of this with Lina, who was taken in by some religious people. They bathed her and fed her, essentially stripping her of her culture. They encouraged her to pray unlike the "heathens." And she submitted. And yet, they would not allow her to come to their church. Morrison subtly calls out these hypocritical Christians. On one hand, they demanded that the "savages" adhered to their religion. But on the other hand, they refused to see them as equals once they converted.

Jacob Vaark looks down upon the Christians because of their hypocrisy. While he did not "own" slaves, he still partook in the slave trade by selling them. He is blind to his own hypocrisy. 

"He was determined to prove that his own industry could amass the fortune, the station, D'Ortega claimed without trading his conscience for coin."

He thought that by not owning slaves like the rest, he maintained his conscience. Clearly, he did not. 
While the narrative shifts to the other characters, we see his "conscience" quickly disintegrating as the years go on. While Morrison called out the hypocritical Christians, we see here that she made an argument that the depravity of the slave trade is really just a by-product of human nature. 

Besides the hypocrisy of religion at play, there are two other themes: womanhood and motherhood. While they are different from one another, in this book they shared more similarities than differences. The male-dominated world treated the women (regardless of their motherly status) quite awfully. They were raped, assaulted, taken advantage of. Abused. They lost their children. They were beaten. Enslaved in various forms. In Rebekah's POV chapter it said: "...her prospects were servant, prostitute, wife...As with any future available to her, it depended on the character of the man in charge...Whatever the danger, how could it possibly be worse?"

And it could be worse--for women of color. Rebekah was white and although she herself faced injustice, she still had the privilege of whiteness. When Jacob died, her physical and financial safety was just a matter of marrying another man. Lina, Sorrow, Florens, and other women of color did not have any sort of reprieve. Their master died; they would need another.

I will say that the timeline is confusing at first, but once you get a hang of it, things make a lot of sense. But I'll quickly explain it because that's one of the things people here were confused about. There are two main timelines: the present (told mostly in Florens' point of view) and the past (changing narratives). The present and past alternate in a series of vignettes/chapters.

The present is when Jacob (aka "Sir") has died. Florens is sent to find her love/blacksmith to get his help for the mistress (Rebekah), who is sick. Her narrative is lyrical and melodic. While her words are limited, she is able to communicate her anxieties and hopes effectively. The past is in 3rd person point of view, and begins with Jacob's POV as he assesses his surroundings of the countryside. Rebekah, Lina, Sorrow, and Scully get their own POV chapters in 3rd person POV. The last chapter (I won't spoil it here) is from another character's perspective, and follows Florens' style of writing.

** SPOILER BELOW**
Florens' mother's POV chapter at the end made me SOB. Here we thought that her mother abandoned her and left her for the wolves. But no. The mother rescued her from the clutches of a vile, disgusting man. And there was a risk in that. But she made it nonetheless to save her child. The sad reality is that so many families had to make this sacrifice back then. So so many.

"It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human."