• Dolen Perkins-Valdez takes an unusual premise and crafts an enchanting first novel. Extremely well-written and wholly original, Wench erxplores a subject we presumably know much about and recasts it in a new, fascinating light.

• Tawawa House was a real resort in pre-Civil War Ohio where slaveholders and their slave mistresses met and mingled. Valdez found the reference to the actual resort in David Levering Lewis’ prize-winning biography of W. E. B. DuBois.

• Perkins-Valdez's profile is growing among critics and peers. One of her short stories is a finalist for the 2009 Robert Olen Butler Short Fiction prize, judged by Butler. The 10 finalists will be published in an anthology by Del Sol Press in summer 2009. In addition, the author was recently awarded a scholarship to the Breadloaf Writers Conference.

Wench: from Middle English, “wenchel,” a girl, maid, young woman; a female child.

Situated in the free state of Ohio, Tawawa House offers respite from life’s vicissitudes and the summer’s heat. A beautiful, inviting house surrounded by a dozen private cottages, the resort is favored by wealthy Southern white men who vacation there, accompanied only by their slave mistresses.

Regular visitors, Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet have forged a deep, enduring friendship. They look forward to their annual reunion, and the opportunity it affords them to catch up on changes in their lives and their respective plantations. The subject of freedom is never shared—until the red-maned, spirited Mawu arrives and voices her determination to escape. For these slave mistresses, to run is to leave behind everything they value most—the friends and families trapped at home. For some, it also means tearing the strong emotional and psychological ties that bind them to their masters—bonds they can barely acknowledge yet don’t fully grasp.

When a fire on the resort sets off a string of tragedies, Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet soon learn tragic lessons—that triumph and dehumanization are inseparable and that love exists even in the cruelest circumstances—as they bear witness to the end of an era.