20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (db)

In my forty years, I, Zarité Sedella, have had better luck than
other slaves. I will live long and my old age will be happy because
my star "mi z'etoile" shines even when the night is cloudy.
I know the taste of being with the man chosen by my heart when
his large hands awaken my skin. I have had four children and one
grandchild, and those who are alive are free.
To be a slave in late 18th-century Saint-Domingue,
Zarité had been fortunate: at nine years old she was sold to
Toulouse Valmorain, a wealthy landowner, but she did not experience
the exhaustion of the sugar cane plantations nor the suffocation and suffering
of the mills, because she was always a domestic slave.
Zarité became the center of a microcosm that was a reflection
of the world of the colony: the master Valmorain, his fragile Spanish wife and
their sensitive son Maurice; the wise Parmentier; the soldier Relais and the
mulatto courtesan Violette; Aunt Rose, the healer; Gambo, the handsome
rebellious slave# and other characters of a cruel conflagration that
would end up devastating their land and casting them far from it