BURNT POT ISLAND

A mysterious house lies at the center of this debut historical novel.

Barr’s book begins with a passage about the history of a house that once graced Burnt Pot Island, off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. The “small, but well-built house stood completely furnished with chairs and dishes from a long-ago date and time,” but “no one knew who built the house or why.” This mystery generates the plot of this tale set in the 1920s. The novel interweaves the stories of Catherine Williams, a Geechee woman with “bright skin and green eyes”—who works as a shucker for Mr. Scarlotti, owner of Scarlotti Oysters—and her beautiful daughter, Licia, “the most fearless child Catherine had ever known.” When it becomes clear that Mr. Scarlotti’s desire for 13-year-old Licia is uncontainable, Catherine commands her husband to take the girl to Skidaway Island. There, she can live under the protection of her older brother, Willie, who works for the White men who run a moonshine operation (“the Shine Boys,” who do “their business...with no worry about the law, murdering anybody who interfered”). After Licia’s arrival on Skidaway, she catches the eye of the mayor, Howard Waterman, who concocts an idea to build a house for her on Burnt Pot, an island known as “nothing but a hammock. Sixty acres of marsh and deep woods,” so he can keep her hidden for nefarious reasons. Soon, Howard is plying Licia with gifts: “High-heeled shoes, fancy dresses, and lacy lingerie.” Quickly, Licia learns that she is also required to service Howard sexually. While she is dazzled by his gifts, she knows that she is not safe. It is up to Catherine to rescue her daughter and risk everything for her family’s freedom. Barr’s novel offers a well-researched and carefully plotted story with two striking protagonists. At one point, Catherine tells her daughter: “Sometimes you just got to do what you got to do. The Lord helps them what helps themselves.” The author’s descriptions of the harsh landscape are vivid and evoke the danger faced by these strong women. The marshlands are “tangled with brush and vines…Marsh grass rooted in quicksand at low tide and under water at high, covered what wasn’t pine woods or prickly palmetto.”

A powerful sense of time and place infuses this well-crafted, disturbing family tale.