The Willow: An Unpleasant Fiction, Based on a True Story

The Willow is the powerfully imagined tale of one of the largest slave uprisings in American history. In 1822 Charleston, South Carolina, upwards of two-thousand enslaved Africans, led by a freeman, Denmark Vesey, planned a bloody revolt against the white slaveholders of the city. As the hot days of early summer settled over the low country, a powder keg of growing tensions between enslaved blacks and suspicious whites was ready to ignite.

Jesse, the slave of a vicious and wealthy plantation owner, struggles to stay connected with his daughter, Moon, who is owned by another family. When the pair are warned of the coming revolt, they are swept into the plot; join the rebels or die along with the whites; if the rebellion fails, they face the hangman. Their next moves must be careful and sure as they spiral toward disaster.

A novel twenty-five years in the making, The Willow is a sweeping, richly detailed story of slavery in the antebellum south set against the lost history of Denmark Vesey's rebellion.