Kind One

A “profoundly imaginative, strikingly original, deeply moving” antebellum tale of two slave girls who take their white mistress into captivity (Kirkus Reviews).
In “a novel that upends what we expect from slavery narratives,” teenage Ginny marries Linus Lancaster, her mother’s second cousin, and moves to his Kentucky pig farm ninety miles from nowhere (Roxane Gay). In the shadows of the lush Kentucky landscape, Ginny discovers the empty promises of Lancaster’s paradise—a place where the charms of her husband fall away to reveal a troubled man and cruel slave owner. Ginny befriends the young slaves Cleome and Zinnia who work at the farm—until Lancaster’s attentions turn to them, and she finds herself torn between her husband and her only companions. The events that follow Lancaster’s death change all three women for life.
Haunting, chilling, and suspenseful, Kind One is a powerful tale of redemption and human endurance in antebellum America, “as devastating a piece of writing as anything one is likely to find in contemporary literature” (Contemporary Review of Fiction).
“This compact but reverberant 19th-century tale tracks a circle of hard-luck souls whose collective tears could fill a dry well. . . . Hunt passes the narration among the principle characters in woozily nonlinear fashion, lending a range of textures to this antebellum melodrama.” —New York Times Book Review
“Opening with a prologue in the form of an extraordinarily beautiful meditation on loss, Hunt’s writing deepens into allegory, symbolism and metaphor, all while spinning forth a dark tale of abuse, incest, and corruption reminiscent of Faulkner.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An unforgettable tale of the savagery of antebellum America. . . . Hunt deftly maintains an unsettling tone and a compelling narrative that will linger with readers long after the last page.” —Publishers Weekly