Reviews

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Whoopi Goldberg

Once again Jewell Parker Rhodes takes us someplace we never knew existed. With insight and depth we get into the lives of these three historical people, Douglass, Douglass, and Assing, only to realize that they are as contemporary as we are. Well done!

Marita Golden
author of The Edge of Heaven

Douglass' Women is richly imagined, haunting and beautifully written. Bringing Anna Douglass and Ottilie Assing out from the prodigious shadow cast by Frederick Douglass, Jewell Parker Rhodes plunges the reader straight into the hearts of these two remarkable women. I have waited a long time to read this story. I will never forget Anna and Ottilie or their passionate history-shaping loyalty and love.

Charles Johnson
author of Middle Passage, winner of the 1990 National Book Award

The story of the fascinating women who loved Frederick Douglass and enriched his life is one of those rare tales that demands telling. In Douglass' Women, Jewel Parker Rhodes meets this challenge beautifully, offering us a passionate, moving novel that explores the place where American history intersects with the human heart.

Pearl Cleage
author of What Looks Like Crazy On an Ordinary Day

Extraordinary...[Jewell Parker Rhodes] has put the history of American race relations into the mouths of the women. The Þrst lines gave me that thrilling shock of recognition that you only feel when what the artist has created is absolutely true to what you know as a female human being.

Janet Cheatham Bell
author of Till Victory Is Won

I was completely captivated by these women. Their stories help to round out and give depth to the life of the great Frederick Douglass. Jewell Parker Rhodes has done splendid work in providing a new and completely plausible perspective on an important period of African American history.

A’Lelia Bundles
author of On Her Own Ground

A poetically imagined, intensely moving love story that transcends time and place. Rhodes writes like a dream...[She] is a master of seduction, plaiting the electrically charged Þbers of love and passion into a tightrope of adoration and longing, of sacriÞce and satisfaction. Enjoy the high wire act, loving and aching with Douglass' Women.

Jervey Tervalon
author of All the Trouble You Need

Powerful and provocative: tragic and beautiful; Jewell Parker Rhodes' Douglass' Women deconstructs an American icon to great affect. Douglass' Women is historical Þction at its best.