From the celebrated author of the secret life of bees: a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world.áHetty´ Handful´ Grimké, an urban slave in early-nineteenth-century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimké household. The Grimkés´ daughter Sarah has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.áKidd´s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah´s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten-year-old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty-five years as both strive for lives of their own, dramatically shaping each other´s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement, and the uneasy ways of love.áAs the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women´s rights movements.áInspired in part by the historic figure of Sarah Grimké, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all her characters, both real and invented, including Handful´s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.áThis exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at one of the most devastating wounds in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.