Book Review: The Known World

I recently finished a heart wrenching book about slavery called The Known World by Edward P. Jones. This book is unique in the fact that much of it deals with African Americans owning slaves, or 'property'--a concept that I found sick and twisted. It was quite uncommon for African Americans to own 'property' way back then, so we don't read much about it in history books--but it did happen. This book was intriguing to me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. While I was reading it, there were facts disbursed throughout the pages and it made me wonder if the author had done research, found certain names and properties, and developed a story around it; however, in the Q/A section at the back of the book, Jones answered all of my questions. All of the facts - even the county of Manchester, Virginia - was fictional and he threw them in there so that the story would be more real to the reader--so the reader would think the characters once lived and breathed because there were so many people out there who lived parallel lives. I highly recommend this book to anyone and it is no wonder that this book is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Here is the cover so you can identify it on the shelves at the book store!