Drayle is master of the house — the plantation house in pre-Civil War Shelby County. Fran, Drayle’s wife, is mistress of the house. But it’s Lizzie, a slave, who is Drayle’s mistress, both in Tennessee and at the resort in Ohio, where Drayle takes Lizzie for three summers in the early 1850s in Dolen Perkins-Valdez’ debut novel Wench (Amistad/HarperCollins).
Here’s what the author, a native Memphian, had to say by phone from Washington, D.C., a week before she returns to her hometown to read from and sign copies of Wench at Rhodes College:
