Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd

Scroll back through the pages of your life and go back to the day of your sixteenth birthday.

What was your biggest concern when you were a teenager? What laid heavy on your mind? What kept you awake at night?

When I was sixteen, my biggest problem was a creepy math teacher, and my weekly dose of drama was injected straight into the vein by the insane storylines in Glee.

(Has Adam Lambert´s character Starchild been absorbed by some kind of a black hole? Probably. Although I suspect it was the Black Hole of the Terrible Script-Writing.)

For Elizabeth Lucas, her sixteenth birthday was the day she thought her life ended, or at least, transformed forever with no lifelines in sight.

The year is 1739. The slaves are growing restless by the day, and Elizabeth Lucas, an untraditional English girl (which is an oxymoron all in itself), has a household to run. She assists her father with writing correspondence and expanding their business, she takes care of her absolutely useless sister Polly, and she has a mentally ill mother to tend to. Her greatest allies – people who are considered property – an enslaved woman Essie who is a more of a mother to her than her real mother ever was, and Ben – a sharp-minded enslaved man – an Indigo whisperer.

Eliza misses England. If it wasn´t for her mother´s poor health, it wouldn´t be her choice to move to the Colonies. It feels like a fatal blow when her father decides to leave (As is a given – Is every father in the history of parentage a hot pile of garbage? Probably. Even the rhyme is too flowy for it to not be confirmed).

He does not leave out of necessity, but a pure ambition to pursue military glory and expand the family fortune in the Caribbean. Unfortunately for Eliza and the next four years of bouncing on and off from impending doom, he only manages to drain the accounts in relentless strive to acquire more land. The South is destitute, and the Lucas Estate is surrounded by merely four families who do not know much about running a business, much like the young businesswoman in the making.

If that was not enough, the civil unrest is bubbling up close. In Belmont, the slaves are already rebelling, and Eliza smells the tension all the way from Charles Town. She relies on the support of Charles Pinckney, a smug lawyer, and an heir to a fellow planter, Colonel Pinckney. (Isn´t there always some Colonel? Probably.)

Where others see obstacles, Eliza sees opportunity. When she susses out how much the French are willing to pay for ink, the only way to remain sustainable is to learn how to make it. But the only people who know the secret to the ancient art of indigo making-process are uncooperative. She promises Ben to teach him how to read in exchange for teaching her how to make indigo.

In the heart of the story, there is love. Not so much a romantic love, but the love of self, the love of self-discovery, and the love of self-sufficiency. The book is written in the first person, which is the ultimate eye-catcher. There is not enough historical fiction written in the first person, primarily due to a lack of imagination. Natasha Boyd, the author, has made her home in South Carolina, a factor broadly to consider when diving into an original story. Circumstances, surroundings, and influences. Perhaps it was Eliza´s pleading letters to her father, or poem-prayers she used to write to console herself when the world crumbled down around her, Boyd entered Eliza´s mind and projected the struggles onto paper masterfully.

The dialogues feel contemporary, but never out of place or aberrant. They portray Eliza´s forward-thinking, and at times, you pray she might figure out how to build a time machine to go back to the future where she belongs.

Maybe you too have a friend you have an arrangement with. Perhaps you, too, know a dedicated lawyer who never asks more than you can give. Maybe you, too, have a selfish father – the story transcends time, and the conundrums Eliza encounters are translatable, relatable, palpable.

The greatest strength has always come from her inner sense of faith in one. She teaches her children as such, children who continue her legacy in shaping a new nation.

Her eldest son Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was a signatory of the United States Constitution. Even after she died in 1793, he continues her legacy, becoming a valued statesman and a vice-presidential nominee for the Federalist Party – a running mate to John Adams in the United States presidential election of 1800.

Whether you´re sixteen years old, in need of a confidence boost, or in search of an electrical kick to the brain, to get that business fired up, to finish up those Excel sheets, or to finally uninstall cable, (Does everyone keep canceling cable subscriptions these days? Probably.) Elizabeth Lucas is the woman to go to for inspiration.

A woman that history should never have forgotten? Probably.

Entirely. Absolutely.