Confederate Like Me

Confederate Like Me is a sensual historical novel that tells the tale of Winnie, a pale complexioned, teenaged, black woman who comes of age in rural southeastern Virginia in the years right after the Civil War. The novel is loosely based on actual events and contains part of my own family history.

Due to financial pressures caused by the Civil War, Winnie's father (a mulatto, ex-slave named Thornton Sr.) tells her that he has arranged for her to marry a local black farmer named Carpenter. After some initial anxiety, Winnie is actually excited by thoughts of being married and finally achieving the status of an adult woman. She secretly hopes that her bridegroom will be the man of her dreams, and that she will be able to raise a family of her own and live happily ever after. However, Winnie's dream becomes completely unhinged by a wedding night surprise.

Several days later she is surprised again when a much older white doctor named Grunburg arrives and explains the true nature of her father's arrangement. She discovers that she has been thrust into an unseemly arrangement by her father: her marriage to Carpenter is a sham, arranged to provide Dr. Grunberg access to sexual pleasures forbidden under the miscegenation laws of the 19th century. As Winnie struggles to come to grips with the life her father has prepared for her, she eventually learns to trust, respect and even fall in love with the much older Dr. Grunburg.

Trouble ensues when the doctor's finances and health begin to fail and Winnie becomes the object of desire of the mysterious headstrong and cunning son of a wealthy Tidewater land-owner. What does this mysterious stranger want? Will the Doctor defend the woman he loves?