Savannah purchase (by Jane Aiken Hodge)

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As far as I can remember, ‘Savannah purchase’ was the first book I ever read by Jane Aiken Hodge. It was given to me for Christmas when I was about sixteen and a half, and I read it soon afterwards and loved it. I reread it ten years later, but the last time I read it was in 2006. For some reason I had not picked it up again until a few days ago.

The novel is set in the United States 1819, four years after the battle of Waterloo led to the cousins Josephine and Juliet being separated. Their mothers were identical twins, and although they had very different fathers, the two look so alike that they can often be mistaken for twins too. 

We meet Juliet first, living on her own and almost destitute after the death of her father. She lives in a very run-down house by the Savannah River in Georgia. She’s read that Josephine is in the country and has sent her a note, so she’s greatly relieved when her cousin arrives by boat, accompanied by black servants. She brings food, and promises to help… but she wants Juliet to help her too. 

When the two were younger, they often impersonated each other. Now Josephine wants her cousin to take her place again, but in a much more serious way: to go into society, to entertain, and to fool her husband Hyde. She assures Juliet that they have a marriage of convenience with separate bedrooms, and that they are rarely together. Josephine has a desperate plot to rescue Napoleon from his exile on the island of St Helena. 

Josephine has always been the stronger character, and Juliet finds herself agreeing; then they spend some weeks together while Juliet learns everything she needs to know about the home she’s going to live in, the servants she will interact with, and the people she will meet.

I’d forgotten all this, but had vaguely remembered that Juliet finds Josephine’s husband Hyde very attractive, increasingly so. He’s generous, and has freed all his slaves although most of them want to stay with him as servants. More and more of them discover Juliet’s secret, and it becomes clear that she’s a much nicer person than her cousin - more thoughtful, and more courteous to her dependents. 

It’s an exciting story, and although there’s some politics and business discussion, the bulk of it is in Juliet’s gradual slotting into her cousin’s life, trying to act as brash and outgoing as Josephine, while longing for a quiet, peaceful life. And for Hyde…

There are some dramatic incidents, and some scary moments for Juliet when she is mistaken for her cousin by people she doesn’t know. It’s clear that Josephine had plenty of male admirers, some of them rather closer than Juliet would be comfortable with. And when she starts being blackmailed, I had another moment’s recollection of what was going to be the outcome.

It’s very well written, and feels entirely authentic. I liked and empathised with Juliet very much, and could almost feel her confusion at times; the whole book is told from her perspective. There are some quite moving scenes towards the end of the book, which I could hardly put down at times.

I’m pleased to find that I liked it every bit as much as I did on previous readings, and hope it won’t be another twenty years before I read it again.

Highly recommended to anyone who likes historical fiction. 

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