She also submits to sexual relations with Valmorain whenever he wants. Zarité, who is devoted to pathetic Eugenia until her early death, lovingly raises baby Maurice and runs the household with great competence. Eugenia bears Valmorain one legitimate heir before she descends into madness. Barely into puberty, Zarité is raped by Valmorain, who gives the resulting son to Violette and her French army officer husband to raise as their own. He buys the child Zarité to be his new Spanish wife Eugenia’s maidservant and has her trained by the mulatto courtesan Violette Boisier, whose charisma could carry a book on its own. In 1770, Toulouse Valmorain arrives in Haiti from France to take over his dying father’s plantation. Given recent events, the timing couldn’t be better for this historical fiction from Allende ( The Sum of Our Days, 2008, etc.), which follows a slave/concubine from Haiti during the slave uprisings to New Orleans in time for the Louisiana Purchase.
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