Captivating exploration of the domestic, Great Narrator, Unfortunate Tokenism

I was impressed that the narrator had a great command of French. My one and only quibble is with her pronunciation of "La Louisiane"--a phrase repeated ad nauseum and which the narrator unfortunately mispronounces, using a voiceless /s/ rather than voiced /z/ sounds for the "s." If you know, you know, and this will irritate you in the first third of the book but not enough to stop listening.

The exploration of women's complicated place in La Louisiane--and the underlying narrative that a new world is perhaps not a place we should go to, let alone "conquer"--does make this book worth listening to.

What might give you pause before purchasing, though, broken into thirds:

The first third (journey to La Louisiane) is excellent overall. We get to know the characters, who are a varied bunch. LGBT stories, neurodiversity, class differences, and hidden women's experiences are all represented here. There is, however, one phrase that signals the tokenism that's to come. Paraphrased from memory: "She had a dream: what if there were other people there already, and they had to leave?"

Of course there are other people in La Louisiane: indigenous people. If you do listen, you will hear how shoehorned this phrase is in relation to the rest of the narrative. It doesn't fit.

The second third (spoilers follow):

On the one hand there is a solid exploration of the varied and uncertain unions the women make with essentially unknown men. There are also comments about enslaved people (black and indigenous) which seem to fit the characters' knowledge. At first, this is not explored and we see all such people as a mysterious "other" while the women just try to survive their first years in the Territory. This initially suits the narrative, as we feel the widening gap between known and unknown, especially related to men's v women's worlds and domestic v exploration.

Then, however, the story goes off its rails and includes a very limited narration by a single indigenous women. We see a bit about life through her eyes, but her entire purpose is to serve and ultimately protect and save one of our characters. Her motivations are sudden and do not match her initial character arc. Rather than including her voice periodically throughout the rest of the tale, she appears for a moment in time as a "noble savage" who finds herself feeling sorry for a white lady, passes on her knowledge, saves the white lady, and then melts away. The author seems to have been determined to use accurate naming and cultural portrayals (tribe, personal names, exploring the distance between what white colonists think and say vs native traditions), so it was all the more frustrating to hear the cliche savior trope. This could have been an interesting, complex storyline, but in the end it is only a tokenizing glimpse.

The final third:

The exploration of more complex domestic and LGBT themes, especially around understanding one's sexuality and possibilities around that, ring more or less true.

The same cannot be said of the characters' relationships to, with, and over enslaved people. We see, over and over, a character's relationship with her enslaved maid. However, we never hear her maid's voice, except through her white enslaver's perspective. The domestic sphere and its challenges are explored, but there are also limited stakes, and ultimately the three white ladies are heros: surviving and taking from the enslaved and colonized peoples, but in a "nice-ish" way. It's important, though, that the terms "enslaved" and "enslaver" are used, however, and it's portrayed time and again how knowledgeable black and indigenous people are, though this typically is only as small background motifs.

I still recommend listening to it and deciding for yourself--I just hope that the author puts her next novel through review by indigenous and POC reviewers. The exploration of women's complicated place in La Louisiane--and the underlying narrative that the grass is always greener on the other side, but that doesn't make it yours--makes it a compelling listen.

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