The Weight of Cloth

The Weight of Cloth was a finalist in the 2025 Historic Fiction, Before 1901 category.

Now available at Newtonville Books and Hummingbird Books (both Newton, MA), as well as Susie’s Stories (Rockport), The Bookstore of Gloucester, and Boulder Bookstore.

Online find THE WEIGHT OF CLOTH at bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Play and IngramSpark.

Bookseller note: There are two IngramSpark catalog listings. The ISBN with wholesale discount: 979-8-9906426-2-1

SOUTH CAROLINA / Mid-1700’s

Four narrators: one privileged, three enslaved.

When Eliza is just sixteen, her father departs for the West Indies leaving her in charge of three heavily mortgaged plantations. Her authority will be challenged in unpredictable ways, including by her mother. A second epidemic erupts and a slave rebellion sweeps the countryside upending assumptions about safety and order. Can Eliza survive and bring a profitable indigo crop to market? Can she hold out for love rather than settle for a marriage of convenience?

Melody, also sixteen, fights against the constraints of slavery with small rebellions. Her most subversive act? Teaching her sons to read. Will freedom lay down a path near enough for it to matter?

July sews like a Parisian couturier, but her defensive pride crumbles when two boys die of the pox. She cries out to the Ancestors for wisdom.

Saffron and her daughter, Maggie, are bewildered and traumatized by their recent harrowing voyage across the Atlantic. Saffron calls upon her innate gift of language to make sense of things, but Maggie’s nearly catatonic. Meanwhile, the plantations best hunter, Indian Pete, catches Saffron’s eye and she wonders if love can exist in such a place. His knowledge of the landscape holds the key to a daring opportunity that could change Saffron and Maggie’s fate forever.

THE WEIGHT of CLOTH offers an unflinching view of history through facts gleaned from the letters of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and extensive research. In spite of slavery’s relentless degradations, the story speaks to the power of resistance and love and highlights both small and large acts of courage. These characters and their stories will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

PLEASE NOTE: The e-platforms wildly inflate page counts. Ignore them.

BLOG POSTS OF INTEREST

Bibliography

Novel-adjacent writing: Water Was

Novel-adjacent passage: Freedom

History Notes

Indigo-dyeing Weekend in Ravenel, SC / Thursday with Sharon Cooper-Murray, The Gullah Lady, Day Two, Day Three , Final Evening and BBQ.

If you’re curious to see more SC/novel posts, use the subject tabs in the sidebar: South Carolina, slavery, indigo, my novel, Middle Passage or follow the links below.

Slavery is here.

Race here.

Middle Passage here.

South Carolina here.

Reflections on a Night in Slave Quarters.

Notes about the novel here.