Rebel by Beverly Jenkins

Narrated by Kim Staunton

For some reason I had never read or listened to a Beverly Jenkins book before. I’m ashamed! Rebel is my first but it definitely won’t be my last.

Set in New Orleans in 1869 after the emancipation, Rebel is the story of Valinda Lacey, a Black woman from New York and Drake LeVeq, a former Union soldier. Neither Valinda nor Drake had been enslaved but both feel passionately about the fate of the freed men and women who were learning to navigate life after slavery. I had so little knowledge about this period of Black American history (not a surprise really given I’m a white Australian woman) but it was fascinating (and enraging and many other things, particularly viewed from the lens of current times where so many things seem the same). I have no doubt that Ms. Jenkins’ history was authentic.

Valinda came from New York, against her father’s wishes, to teach freed men and women to read. So many formerly enslaved people could not read or write and this lack of education severely hampered their ability to thrive. An education had, for the most part, been something only for white people but now, it was possible.

Valinda is engaged to her best friend Cole. Cole and his business partner, Lenny, are on a European trip to arrange financing for a newspaper they want to start. While she’s waiting for Cole, she will teach in New Orleans and Cole will pick her up on his way home to New York. Or at least, that’s the plan.

As much as Cole and Valinda are good friends, it is not a love match. Rather, Valinda had watched her older sister be married off to a much older man at the behest of her tyrant father. Val didn’t want that for herself; she saw how unhappy her sister was. To sidestep her father’s plan, she and Cole became engaged. Because Cole is the son of Valinda’s father’s employer, there wasn’t much he could object to.

Valinda is an independent woman. Her father referred to her as a “hellion”. Her parent’s marriage is not at all happy and neither is her sister’s. She doesn’t have high regard for the institution of marriage at all actually, never having seen anyone happy with it before. She and Cole have an agreement about how their marriage will be and because of their strong friendship and other reasons I won’t go into here because spoilers, she knows she will be safe and content, even if there will be no passion.

After Valinda is attacked by a group of violent men, Drake LeVeq and his sister-in-law, Sable, come to Valinda’s rescue. As it happens, within hours, Valinda is kicked out of her lodgings and is left with nowhere else to turn but to the LeVeq family.

The LeVeq matriarch, Julianna, takes Valinda under her wing and offers her a place to stay. The LeVeq family are wealthy and Julianna has her own business interests, separate to her husband’s. Valinda is astounded to see how the LeVeq family interact with one another and is faced with evidence of two happy marriages.

Drake was instantly smitten by Valinda and his family pretty much know he’s a goner from the very start. But he has to work hard for Valinda’s heart. Plus, Valinda is already engaged!

Valinda is attracted to Drake as well and given she plans to enter into a strictly companionate marriage, she sees no harm in exploring some passion with Drake if he will allow it. I admit I was initially a little uncomfortable about what could be termed cheating but other revelations later in the book eased my mind considerably.

Valinda is trying to start her own school and Drake will do just about anything for her so he comes up with ways to help her dream come true.

There is a fair amount of violence in the book. The men who attack Valinda try to rape her (but do not succeed) and there are white supremacists who seek to harm the freedmen and the LeVeq family. There is some vigilante justice from the Black community to a white criminal which made me a little uncomfortable at first but then I thought about it some more and decided: a) it was a different time and b) it was not undeserved and c) as a privileged white woman it’s not for me to judge even in a fiction book and d) I think the power differential makes a difference too. A white Supremacist group doing violence to a Black man for the “crime” of being alive is very different to a group of Black men with no political or law enforcement power (who have been in fact told that there will be no justice for them from the law or the state) meting out their own rough justice.

The women of the LeVeq family and Valinda herself were strong, independent women and the men who loved them adored them just that way.

Some things happened a bit too quickly for me and some decisions both Drake and Valinda made surprised me. In Valinda’s case, I just didn’t get it and in Drake’s the self-sacrifice seemed just a little over-the-top.

Kim Staunton narrates. She has a very pleasant voice, with a reasonable depth for her male characters. Although not very different to the female cast, there was enough for me to know who was speaking. The accents were good too. However, she paused at odd times during sentences for reasons I couldn’t always fathom. On some occasions, it was obvious she’d run out of breath but in others, it felt almost like she was turning a page in a book before continuing. The performance wasn’t seamless, and the frequent unnecessary/inappropriate pauses were distracting.

The emotions and tension of the story were well delivered however, and I liked the way Ms. Staunton performed the intimate scenes.

As much as I liked Valinda and Drake (and I did), the best part of the book for me was the history. That time period is not one I’ve read much about in any setting. In Rebel it was powerful and enraging and so many other things. At heart though Rebel is of course a romance and I believed in Val and Drake’s HEA so it succeeded on that level for me as well.

Kaetrin

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