Queen Sugar

Queen Sugar is the debut novel of American writer Natalie Baszile, published by Penguin in 2014. Set in contemporary Louisiana, it tells the story of Charley Bordelon, a young African-American divorcee from Los Angeles who moves to a rural town to manage a sugarcane farm she had unexpectedly inherited there from her father. Plot Charley Bordelon is a young mother in Los Angeles, recently widowed after her husband was killed for fighting back during a robbery hold-up. After the death of her father, she learns that rather than inheriting his local rental properties, she has inherited a sugarcane farm in St. Joseph, Louisiana, where he was born and raised. Against her mother's wishes, Charley moves to St. Joseph, taking her 15-year-old daughter, Micah, with her and moving in with her paternal grandmother, Miss Honey. Shortly after arriving, Charley learns that her property manager has been neglecting the farm and is about to quit to work an oil rig. She is hard pressed to find another property manager so late in the season but Prosper Denton, a retired farmer recommended by Miss Honey, reluctantly agrees to come out of retirement to help her. Charley's estranged older half-brother, Ralph Angel, a former drug addict and the child of their father's relationship with his high school sweetheart in St. Joseph, returns to town with his son, Blue. Angel is deeply embittered that his father left him nothing, and he also resents Charley for having been raised by a man who essentially abandoned him. Charley struggles to keep the farm going, quickly realizing that it takes more money than was earmarked for maintenance. She believes that wealthy white farmers in the area, such as Jacques Landry and Samuel T. Baron, are conspiring against her and ready to take over the land if she fails. She learns from Miss Honey that her father once worked as a cane cutter on the farm she now owns. In the days of segregation and Jim Crow, he was beaten by an overseer for drinking from a water pail first instead of giving way to the white workers. She renews her determination to keep the farm running, as a way of continuing her father's struggle. She and Denton hire a retired white farmer, Alison Delcambre, to help manage the farm. They recover from a hurricane that flattens the crops.