Reviewed by Rosie Malezer for Readers' Favorite

The Diary of Narcissa Dunn is the first book in the Redemption series written by Elaine Violette. The year is 1826. Haunted by frequent dreams of a mysterious woman, nineteen-year-old Olivia Fuller sits at the breakfast table and cringes as her preacher father continues to push her to marry twenty-five-year-old bigot, William Tapley, a self-professed man of God who looks down on the lower classes, pays no attention whatsoever to the town’s black folk, but is smitten with Olivia. As she feels not even the slightest bit of fondness for William, Olivia objects to her father’s wishes, causing him to preach the word of God to her as she eats. When William questions Lovena’s service as a maid due to her color, advising Reverend Fuller that Negroes should be sent back to Africa where they can thrive, the reverend is taken aback by William’s racist arrogance, and explains that Lovena is more a part of the family than a maid, having served more than one generation of the Fuller clan.

Outside the Fuller home, Benjamin Pratt works hard to restore the family’s stables which, he is told by Lovena, are haunted by the ghost of Olivia’s mother. Shrugging off Lovena’s superstitions, Ben focuses all of his attentions into adoring Olivia from a distance as he is infatuated by her beauty and innocence, but is of a lower class. After their first interaction, however, Olivia cannot stop thinking about Ben and his chivalrous occupation which shows hard work and devotion to his craft of carpentry. While renovating what was once the servant’s quarters in the stables, Ben happens upon a diary, the contents of which are so horrific that revealing the shocking truths inside would shake Olivia’s spirit and shatter her soul. Ben has a choice to either destroy the woman that he loves so desperately with honesty, or to keep the diary’s contents a secret, allowing her to be tricked into a loveless marriage with a man she loathes. Whichever path he chooses, Ben knows that he will lose the only woman who has ever loved him without question.

The Diary of Narcissa Dunn was a very difficult book for me to read. Although the book was extremely well written and captured the historic era of the early nineteenth century so beautifully, the issues discussed are raw, traumatic, and are very much a part of my own reality. Elaine Violette has done an incredible job of transporting the reader back to a time when women were judged by their standing, class, and what type of wife they would become. The attitude towards slaves and the ill treatment of people due to the color of their skin, while not surprising, was still a real eye-opener as the words were woven in such a way as to allow the reader to live and feel it. The shock of the diary’s contents was, indeed, soul-crushing and heartbreaking, and shows that you can never judge a person by what they appear to be. I found The Diary of Narcissa Dunn to be thought-provoking and very well written. I will be seeking out the other books in the Redemption series and recommend this book to anybody who is not afraid of some harsh historical truths served up with love, lust, betrayal, and a ghost who is determined to see justice done.