The recap
Michigan, in the uneasy years before the Civil War. Hester Wyatt escaped slavery as a child, and now, a grown woman of quiet steel, she helps others do the same as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. When a badly beaten man is brought to her for safekeeping, she learns he is the Black Daniel, a near-legendary conductor with a price on his head. She hides him, nurses him and, once he is well enough to talk back, argues with him. Galen Vachon comes from wealth and privilege, and he is used to getting his way; the distance between his world and her hard-won independence proves almost as daunting as the danger outside her door. Beverly Jenkins grounds the romance in carefully researched history, from abolitionist networks to the free Black communities of the North, without ever letting the research slow the story. Warm, sensual and principled, Indigo is about two people who have given everything to the cause of freedom, and who must decide whether they may also claim some joy for themselves.
Why read it
For readers who want a historical romance rooted in African American history, with a steadfast heroine, a swoon-worthy hero and a real sense of what was at stake.
Fun facts
- 01
TIME included Indigo in its 2024 list of the 50 best romance novels to read right now.
- 02
It also appears on NPR's 2015 list of 100 swoon-worthy romances, assembled from a reader poll and a panel of authors and reviewers.
- 03
Encyclopedia.com notes that the novel broke new ground by exploring prejudice not only against Black Americans but also between Black people of different social classes.
- 04
Jenkins, who worked at Michigan State University's library, published her first novel in 1994; she has said she began writing to see characters who looked like her in historical stories that were not built around slavery.
- 05
In a 2021 profile, NPR's Code Switch called Jenkins the undisputed queen of Black 19th-century romance.
