Cane River (novel)

Cane River is a 2001 historical novel by Lalita Tademy that was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection. In a blend of fact and fiction, Tademy tells the story of four generations of her slave-born female ancestors — Elisabeth, Suzette, Philomene, and Emily — following their trajectories from the 1830s to the 1930s. The culture she explores, that of slaves who remained in bondage until after the American Civil War, bears some core similarities but radical dissimilarities to that of Cane River's Melrose-St. Augustine society, whose families had lived as free from the late Spanish period of Louisiana history.