Send Judah First by Brian C. Johnson is the fictionalized account of the real life of a young slave woman. The author stumbled across her name on a visit to historical property Belle Grove Plantation in northern Virginia. There are only two documents proving her existence – a slave ledger and a letter sent out from the mistress of the estate noting Judah’s death. Johnson’s curiosity and fascination sent him down a road of research as he attempted to piece together Judah’s life. While much of the book is fiction, there are a number of real-life details and characters.
The plot is about what you’d expect of a biography of a slave girl. It’s filled with the abhorrent patterns of slavery – brutality, rape, intense working conditions, separation from family, dreams of freedom, the will to survive, et cetera. We meet Judah when she is first transported onto a slave trade vessel, separated from her parents and ripped from her homeland at only 12 years of age. From there, we follow her over the next 20+ years as she is purchased and eventually sold to Belle Grove.
The unique detail of her life and this account is her famed cooking. This permeates the entire book. She’s the cook for not only the master and his family but also for all the slaves living on the plantation. Cooking fills Judah’s days and the pages of the novel. She’s valued for her skills in the kitchen, and this cements her destiny to live out her days at Belle Grove.
I love it when a story means so much to an author, when they feel so passionate about what they are sharing. I definitely think that comes across in Johnson’s writing. The reader can tell how committed Johnson is to telling this story to the best of his ability. He also spends a good deal of time writing out the sensitive conversation between Christians regarding slavery, as the master of Belle Grove was a reverend. He quotes a substantial amount of Scripture and doesn’t shy away from the southern church’s role in advocating for slavery versus up in the North, where many Christians were heavily involved with abolition. It was interesting to read the conversation between two professing Christians who argued so strongly in both directions. As a Christian myself, it broke my heart to read the arguments for slavery and how out-of-context Scripture was taken to promote it.
Johnson is not graphic in his depictions of beatings or rape, so the book was less difficult or heavy to swallow as some other slavery accounts. It’s not long, and I read it in just about 24 hours. I have two critiques though: First, Johnson’s dialogue for the slaves is written out phonetically to convey their accents (things like, “Fo sho,” “Massuh Hite,” “Git yo reah ova heah”). I found this a little distracting as the reader as I had to decipher every spoken word or thought by the slaves. Perhaps it would’ve been better as an audiobook? Secondly, for a relatively short book, it covers Judah’s entire life in slavery. There were a lot of things that I feel we could’ve spent more time on and gone deeper into that would’ve been really interesting. Instead, some things were glossed over in order to get through her tale in its entirety.
It’s definitely worth the read if history – especially abolition, slavery, African American history – is your thing. It’s not the deepest, darkest book on the subject, but it still has a strong message and a passionate author who sought to tell one woman’s story the best he could.
Jessica
Copyright Brian C. Johnson and Hidden Shelf. Image from Amazon.com.
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