This book is set in Texas in 1852 where six enslaved women are faced by the prospect of being impregnated by a 'stockman', brought to the plantation by its owner in order to increase his slave numbers and rescue his failing plantation.

It put me in mind of The Handmaid's Tale, albeit one is set in the future and this is set in the past. However, both deal with the issue of the forced impregnation of women. At least, we can hold out hope that the future will not bring anything even approaching this very disturbing image. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the past and any book which deals with such a bleak time in history does not make for easy reading.

However, what elevates this book is the close friendship the women form in order to protect themselves from pregnancy and consequently deny the plantation owner his aim.

There are some very powerfull scenes in this book. However, the camaraderie between the six women and the small chinks of light they are able to find in their lives make for an excellent read. The author is a gifted storyteller and writes with conviction and confidence.

Ms. Peyton has given us an excellent debut novel and if this is anything to judge by then she is one to watch.

Intriguingly, Night Wherever We Go is narrated in the third-person plural. The six women at the heart of it, all slaves on a Texas smallholding, are apparently telling their story through a single voice.

The device only serves to highlight how fragmented they are. They are six very different characters, and while their enforced intimacy leads to moments of kindness and solidarity, they don’t appear to form close friendships. More often they are thrown into conflict, both by their temperaments and by the nature of their oppression. Still, they resist, using the limited means at their disposal. It is this resistance which forms the backbone of the story.

The six women are the property of a white couple, the Harlows, who are struggling to make a success of their smallholding. The Harlows bring in a ‘stockman’, a male slave to impregnate the women, so they can sell off any children. The women are forced to have sex with him, but they have one weapon – a natural remedy which inhibits pregnancy. 

Stories of family, fertility and intimacy are at the heart of Night Wherever We Go. While Lizzie Harlow, constantly pregnant, bemoans her lack of control over her own body and her constant labours, the slaves know that for them motherhood can only mean loss. This is true even for Patience, who has her young son with her. When he is moved into the Harlows’ house as a houseboy, he becomes increasingly shy and distant with her.

The financially precarious position of the Harlows means the women are protected from some of the worst brutality meted out to slaves in large plantations – whipping or execution would deprive their owners of their one asset. However, they are still subject to arbitrary treatment, and their proximity to the Harlows creates other problems.

Junie grew up in Lizzie’s mother’s household, and her mother was the family cook. Lizzie both asserts her authority over Junie and claims a bond. Junie resents her, but also wants to stay close to her, because it is only through Lizzie’s letters from relatives that she might get news of her own children, who were taken from her and sold to other members of Lizzie’s family.

A couple of things threw me. One is a point later in the narrative where the story suddenly shifts into the point of view of another character. Another is a future foreshadowed but with no insight into how the characters will get there.

Still, Night Wherever We Go is an evocative and absorbing read, portraying brutality and cruelty but shot through with defiance and hope.
*
I received a copy of Night Wherever We Go from the publisher via NetGalley.

A read way out of my comfort zone that I found a little disorienting at first, in trying to find clear points of difference between the characters and any sort of plot, but the sense of place and time was so breath-taking I carried on reading it, and I’m glad I did.
Set in Texas in the 1850s, Night Wherever We Go follows a group of slave women working on a small farm owned by a farmer who is clearly going broke. Much of the book is taken up with the daily lives of the women, but a narrative thread does emerge (and I know, with literary fiction it does take longer) and each of the slaves find their voice. The author’s skill is to immerse the reader totally in the awfulness of their existence; not just the hunger, the hard work, the degradation suffered, but the abominable inhumanity shown them by people who considered themselves their betters.
A book that needs to be read, that should be read. But apart from the quality of the prose, not one to enjoy.

Quite an interesting narrative and debut. Firstly I want to thank NetGalley for the opportunity of reading an ARC of this book.

The historical fiction with lead female characters facing oppression and the trauma and fear of living within that time period gripped me from the first minutes, The opening scene really sets out the scene and I enjoyed the mix of POVs as well as the masterful transition between them very much, The story was hard-hitting and made me finish the book over the weekend as I couldn't put it down. However, fleshing out of the characters could have been done better with us as readers only getting glimpses of the select few rather than all 6 of them. IT could have benefitted from having us connect with each of the characters on a personal level however given that this is a stand-alone I understand the constraints that come with it.

Dark, poignant and devastating. Night Wherever We Go follows a group of six enslaved women on a Texan plantation suffering from financial difficulties. The plantation owners - The Lucy’s - hire a “stockman” to impregnate the women in order to rectify their economic hardships.

The women band together to rebel against their owners, chewing cotton root clippings to prevent pregnancy.

The novel was gritty and gripping, it instils a lot of emotion within the reader and did a great job at depicting the terrible injustices that went on in America.

The relationship between the women isn’t always one of camaraderie, there are heated moments and the relationships amongst them are complicated.

I particularly liked the parts between Serah and Noah and found Noah’s later letters to Serah both beautiful and depressing.

I wished there were more scenes between Mrs Lucy and Junie as the ending felt quite abrupt due to the lack of depth between the two characters throughout the novel. There are a lot of characters and the novel isn’t very long so at times I felt as though I wanted more.

Written from the perspective of one of the women slaves on a Texas cotton farm before the start of the civil war, we follow the lives of Patience, Lulu, Junie, Serah and Nan as they each try to live within the confines placed on them by the farm owners, known to the slaves as the Lucy's.

Though featuring acts of cruelty including separation of families, beatings, forced copulation and murder, Night Wherever We Go manages to also carry a sense of hope through the bond the women have and their abilities to enjoy 'ordinary' things like parties with local slaves, despite the hardships they endure.

A novel that will likely stay with you a while after reading, it is ultimately a story about longing. Whether this longing is to be reunited with a loved one or to be free.

Fascinating and humbling and a storyline that drew me in. The backdrop is Texas in the 1800s and there is a family with a group of physically strong but also strong minded female slaves. These slaves, each with their own personal backstories and much more individual than their masters would allow anyone to believe, stage their own rebellions against those that try to control their every life choice. They call their masters The Lucy’s after Lucifer and find ways to meet in the dead of night and thwart the efforts treat them as breeding stock animals which had real echoes for me of how close The Handmaid’s Tale was to some people’s reality.
It is a real tale of resilience and the power of the human psyche to stand up for yourself and for survival in adversity. There are stark reminders of the horrors of slavery and also the real dangers of being female and childbearing.
I loved the mix of history and a really solid heart wrenching tale and the harsh realities of their lives, both man made and otherwise. A definite recommended read.

This was a really interesting and readable book.
It vividly described the lot of slaves on a cotton farm in Texas. Treated like animals and mated with men chosen by their owner, they have no freedom. But some manage to fall in love...
Most striking is the lack of control any of them have over their lives.
Highly recommend,.

Fascinating, raw and compelling. Enslaved women band together to survive a terrible fate. Rich historical context and interesting characters. I could not put this book down!

This was so raw and emotive. it's deep dark with well written characters and a unique storyline it just didn't capture my attention completely. I do recommend as it is a compellingly unique viewpoint and I learnt a lot from reading this but this was just okay not the best thing I've ever read.

An intimate look at the domestic lives of enslaved women, NIGHT WHEREVER WE GO is an evocative meditation on resistance and autonomy, on love and transcendence and the bonds of female friendship in the darkest of circumstances.

On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys—as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself—have decided to turn around the farm’s bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired a “stockman” to impregnate them. But the women are determined to protect themselves.

Now, each of the six faces a choice. Nan, the doctoring woman, has brought a sack of cotton root clippings that can stave off children when chewed daily. If they all take part, the Lucys may give up and send the stockman away. But a pregnancy for any of them will only encourage the Lucys further. And should their plan be discovered, the consequences will be severe.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book is sadness personified. It details life for a group of slaves on a struggling smallholding. It underlines the cruel inhumanity of chattel slavery and the callous disregard for a human life that is utterly dispensable merely because it is racially different. The slaves demonstrate considerable resilience, creativity and fortitude in surviving so long, but this only serves to highlight the cruelty they face.

The life and survival of a group of female slaves in the 1850s; the relationship between them and their impoverished farmer owners. When the crops fail, the answer is to impregnate the women - the women decide to rebel, trying to take the choice back into their hands.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book...

On the one hand it was fantastically evocative and the main characters felt very real, especially their raw emotions throughout everything they experience. However on the other hand the book is not very plot driven, or at least, not in the way the book description infers. The covert rebellion storyline is only a small part of this book, and for the rest of it we follow the characters' lives over several years. But because there are six main characters, I found it hard to truly connect with any of them and it began to just feel like an account of chronological events. I think the plural narrative didn't help with this as I often felt kind of distanced from the characters. The ending especially emphasised this as things happen very quickly without really describing how the main characters feel about it, leaving the reader to make up their own conclusions. So whilst I found the prose engaging, the historical events informative, and the storylines heart-wrenching, I'm not sure this book is for me.

I am glad that I have read this book as it has taught yet another disgusting thing white people have done to black people however, I cannot say that captured my attention.

I can't quite pinpoint what it actually was that has made me rate it 3 stars. I like the authors writing style, I find the characters well developed. I think maybe there are parts that could be removed without losing anything from the story.

Whilst this hasn't been my favourite book this year I would still recommend it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins UK for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

Wow, what can I say, beautiful, brutal & thought provoking. I loved it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.

Whew, this is emotive and hard-hitting! Not that other slave narratives are not, but Peyton has gone all out on the intimate and personal impacts of slavery on a small group of women, and that granular focus pays off big time.

This really drills down into what it means to be a chattel with no bodily boundaries or autonomies: especially pertinent here is the issue of child-bearing. Children born through consensual relationships are themselves chattel slaves to a inhumane owner and may be 'lost' to their mother; but, possibly more pernicious, is the concept of 'breeders': Black men who are forced to act as studs to impregnate slave women in order to augment the owner's slave holding - institutionalised rape, if you like.

Peyton gets that difficult balance right between the depictions of raw brutalities and giving us something to hold onto through the succouring relationships of the women. With issues of motherhood, fertility and a woman's right to choose back in our headlines, it's fascinating that any limited resistance available to the enslaved women here is via some kind of tentative control over their own bodies.

This kind of intimate, personal, female slave narrative is always going to be in the shade of Toni Morrison's kick-in-the-gut 'Beloved' but Peyton writes into a space of her own with her graceful, natural prose and that searing tragic-triumphant ending.

By focusing on the experiences of a group of black women slaves in Deep south USA in the years before slavery was abolished this book has something important to say .I’ve read a number of novels set in the era looking at slavery and slave ownership but this was the first novel I had read that did so primarily through the experiences of women .women are mothers daughters fieldworkers or child caters but all slaves Their lives and how this had influenced their behaviours and characters was described in the story .Sometimes brutal the author does not avoid difficult subjects but does so with sensitivity and nuance .By looking at the domestic and intimate small details of these women’s lives the true brutality and dehumanising effect of slavery is revealed .The book is not however all brutality we learn about the ways the women held on to their humanity to allow them to care for each other ,retain their varied religious beliefs .We also see something about the ways white women were living at the time .The isolation loneliness and starkness of their lives mirrored on occasion those of their enslaved women
The author has a flowing easily read writing style I very much enjoyed reading the book .ultimately it is a hopeful story as a reader we are aware that freedom was on the horizon
I read a copy on NetGalley Uk HarperClins Uk Harper Fiction 27th April 2023
This review will be published on NetGalley Goodreads and my book Blog ok Wordpress Bionic Sarah’s Books

Night Wherever We Go is a harrowing story of injustice, bitterness and silent rebellion. The voices of six slaves entwine in this haunting narrative, following their efforts to eke out survival on a struggling plantation as their owners brutally enforce slave breeding. Yep, it's bleak and pretty hopeless, but Peyton also captures the strength and resilience of these women who fight to regain some autonomy in a world that utterly dehumanises them.

It's a story with a solid, fairly simple concept at its root, so I found the atmospheric prose and writhing structure a little overwrought in comparison. In some ways, the style is very effective - it conjures an eerie uneasiness. But I also found the lyricism distanced me, and the shifting perspective almost undermines the fact that these women are reclaiming their individual voices and fates.

A great read! The storyline is interesting and endaring as it is about women trying to go against their master! While he wants to get financially better and wishes more slaves he decided to get one man to make the women pregnant. However that was without relying on the women's shrewd thinking. They will try all they can , looking for help in their own faiths, superstions, conjuring.... This was highly interesting! Relationships between men and women, mothers and their children play an essential role, which gave me a lot to think about! The characters are vividly described, focusing on the obvious (cliché?) attitude between slaves owners' bad personality and their slaves being the good ones. Maybe the author wanted to emphasize the differences. Hence a 4* instead of a 5*. The superb imagery writing took me straight inside their cabins as well as in their mind.
Highly recommended novel!
I received a complimentary ARC of this novel from NetGalley and I am leaving voluntarily an honest.