Cane River

Lalita Tademy's semi-fictionalized history about three generations of women in her mother's family is an absorbing read. For people who've read Alex Hayley's 'Roots' this is a woman-centric and shorter novel of the same genre. The story is set in a Creole community, and the language, the society and the rules are somewhat different from the usual fictional books of slavery in the Southern states.

The story is interesting to me because it's written from a woman's perspective. The female characters are the strong ones; the men play rather marginal roles here, and their characters seem less developed. The setting and the descriptions of Creole life make the reader require little effort to imagine life in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Louisiana.

This books was a selection of Oprah's book club, and should appeal to women readers.