Fox Creek

Set on a plantation in antebellum Louisiana, this historical novel will remind readers of the long reach of Greek tragedy.

The story really begins when the Jenseys buy some enslaved people in 1843, including—as a companion for their daughter, Kate—a pretty, young biracial girl named Monette. The Jenseys own the Fox Creek plantation, upriver from New Orleans. They are William and Sarah, and their two children: Kate and her older brother, Breck. William is rightly proud of Fox Creek, which he took over after his father’s death. He and Sarah work hard and William treats enslaved people fairly by his lights, and better than most of his neighbors do. He disciplines them if he has no other choice, but he also rewards the group. Farming is often chancy, yet he is determined to eventually leave a prosperous Fox Creek to Breck. Then comes trouble, the depth of it hardly recognizable at the time. One of the newer enslaved workers, Sawney, insists on hoeing cotton by himself, not with a gang, the practice at Fox Creek. Of course, the real issue is insubordination. William tries, fruitlessly, to reason with the man. William ends up shooting a fleeing Sawney in the hip. Now, William has made an implacable enemy who will lurk on the edges of the story from then on. The climax of the tale is classically tragic—and aching with the irony that no Jensey had seen it coming, although attentive readers will, at least in broad outline.

While this is Torrey’s first novel for an adult audience, the author of 12 children’s books is experienced and it shows, especially in the compelling period details and the depth of these characters. Readers learn about daily life on a working plantation. Even though plantation life offers its diversions and rustic celebrations, William and Sarah don’t swan around drinking mint juleps all day. In addition, the neighbors’ talk of the looming conflict between the states just makes William uncomfortable. He is no firebrand. William is a man of his times, totally captured by the masculine myth. He loves his wife—she deserves it—and worries about Breck, who works hard to please Papa but is bookish and hardly looks forward to taking over the plantation. Kate comes closest to the Southern belle stereotype, but she is, after all, a typical romantic teenager. Monette has affected the siblings’ lives in sometimes-terrible ways. And where, exactly, is a biracial girl supposed to fit into the Southern social scheme of things? Underlying it all, of course, and driving the absorbing plot is that “peculiar institution,” slavery, and the Jenseys’ desperate attempts to normalize an enormity. The Jenseys do their part in maintaining that fiction and so do the enslaved. But then comes Sawney, the rebuke to it all, the embodiment of smoldering rage, the avenging warrior. In this riveting story, Torrey exhibits a keen writer’s instinct for the metaphorical. Here is William in a heated showdown with Breck: “But no sooner had relief soothed his battered spirit, it flitted away again like a bird undecided where to roost.” And in a lighter vein: “It wasn’t until September peeped its head around the corner of August.”

A rich, engrossing tale about the antebellum South that delivers indelible characters.