A Sitting in St. James

Rita Williams-Garcia

May 2021 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award!

7 starred reviews! "Monumental." —Booklist (starred review) * "A marathon masterpiece."—Kirkus (starred review) * "Necessary."—SLJ (starred review) * "Shocking and dramatic."—Shelf Awareness (starred review) * "Mesmerizing, confounding and vividly rendered."—Book Page (starred review) * "Williams-Garcia’s storytelling is magnificent; her voice honest and authentic."—Horn Book (starred review)

This astonishing novel from three-time National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia about the interwoven lives of those bound to a plantation in antebellum America is an epic masterwork—empathetic, brutal, and entirely human—and essential reading for both teens and adults grappling with the long history of American racism.

1860, Louisiana. After serving as mistress of Le Petit Cottage for more than six decades, Madame Sylvie Guilbert has decided, in spite of her family’s objections, to sit for a portrait.

While Madame plots her last hurrah, stories that span generations—from the big house to out in the fields—of routine horrors, secrets buried as deep as the family fortune, and the tangled bonds of descendants and enslaved, come to light to reveal a true portrait of the Guilberts.

Rita Williams-Garcia is one of the preeminent authors of our time. She has been honored with the Children's Literature Lecture Award from the American Library Association.

Ratings and reviews

A Sitting in St. James is a powerful historical novel set in 1860 in the St. James Parrish in what is now Louisiana. It is meticulously and carefully researched and the writing is beautiful and lyrical. The rural Louisiana setting is lush and atmospheric. The setting is a struggling southern sugar cane plantation during the time of slavery. The Guilbert family are the white plantation owners, headed by their matriarch Madame Sylvie, the daughter of a prominent French family, who was connected to Marie Antionette. Integral to the story are the black slaves owned by the family and individuals of mixed race, on the plantation and in the community. The events in the story take place over decades and lead to the unveiling of a portrait of Madame Sylvie, something which she desires to appease her pride and feed her hunger for social status. The characters and storylines are myriad, well-developed and complex. The author skillfully portrays how the characters think and feel, and what motivates them. The character of Thisbe, Madame Sylvie's personal slave who was taken from her family as a young girl and named for Marie Antionette's dog, is brilliantly depicted and a central heroine of the story. The unveiling of the portrait is accompanied by a dramatic denouement as the various characters' stories reach their resolution. This book contains descriptions of degradation, violence, cruelty, sexual assault and abuse, making it very difficult to read at times; yet, one must bear witness to the horrors of slavery and not turn away. Atrocities occur when people are regarded as less than human. A Sitting in St. James helps us understand the origins and persistence of racism and white privilege. Thank you to BookSparks for the opportunity to read this brilliant and important masterpiece. #BookSparks #SRC2021

About the author

Rita Williams-Garcia's Newbery Honor Book, One Crazy Summer, was a winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, a National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. The two sequels, P.S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama, were both Coretta Scott King Author Award winners and ALA Notable Children’s Books. Her novel Clayton Byrd Goes Underground was a National Book Award finalist and winner of the NAACP Image Award for Youth/Teen Literature. Rita is also the author of five other distinguished novels for young adults: Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; No Laughter Here, Every Time a Rainbow Dies (a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book), Fast Talk on a Slow Track (all ALA Best Books for Young Adults); and Blue Tights. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, New York, with her husband and has two adult daughters. You can visit her online at ritawg.com.