Cherokee Rose is the name of a restored plantation in North Georgia with mesmerizing gardens but a haunted past. As beautiful as it is, the grounds hold a historical atrocity. This book is about a haunting. It’s also about the bonds that are formed between three women who find themselves drawn to its connection to the history of Native American slaveholders.
The African diaspora and Native Americans share a long and painful past, and Miles uses the union of Jinx, Cheyenne, and Ruth to communicate one thread of 19th century American history. The Cherokee Rose pays homage to the spirituality, resiliency, and legacy of both African and indigenous women.
I love books where people try to uncover the mysteries of their ancestry and heritage and find the answers where they are least expected. Tiya Miles is an African-American Cherokee scholar — Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study — who has previously written two non-fiction books about relations between Cherokee and African Americans in the South.
This novel was exceptionally well-researched. With that being said, it reads more like a history textbook than historical fiction. Because it focuses so much on facts, I felt as though the characters are not super developed and do not offer a lot of emotion.
The plantation was once owned by a rich Cherokee chief who had as many as 115 enslaved people. This is no ordinary plantation. We get to know the characters and become aware of their weaknesses and witness their growth. The story takes us into the past through a diary the women find. Life at the plantation comes alive through the diary entries. I did appreciate the entries, but maybe they could have been spaced out in the novel. We learn about being an enslaved person, being an Indian, being mixed, and the boundaries of social class.
The main character is lesbian, and a flirtation and romance develop between her and another main female character. I appreciated that the romance was a story element on its own and not the whole focus of the story. Is this important to the book? Yes, it is. Otherwise, the author would not have written these characters so. The main characters do not ride the fence about their racial identity. The paths of protagonists Jennifer “Jinx” Micco, Cheyenne Cotterell, and Ruth Mayes intertwine during their searches for truth, riches, and adventure, leading them to the Chief James Hold plantation in North Georgia’s Blue Ridge territory, once the heart of the Cherokee Nation.
Jinx is a Muscogee (Creek) Nation historian, columnist, and part-time librarian. She penned a story in her local tribal newspaper about Mary Ann Battis, a mixed-race Creek educated by Christian missionaries.
Jinx takes pride in her research skills. As noted in the story, “she doesn’t deal in sanitized history.” Her friend Deb, however, feels that Jinx’s article was shortsighted in her interpretation of Mary Ann’s motivations and loyalties. Deb asks Jinx to travel to Georgia to kill two birds with one stone: to find out more about Mary Ann Battis — a member of their tribe — and to possibly retrieve historical tribal documents from the Hold House.
This is when Jinx meets Cheyenne, a debutante from Atlanta who is determined to win the historic Hold House (the plantation manor and a former museum) at auction. I found Cheyenne to be shallow and self-absorbed in many ways, yet smart in her dealing for the property.
Ruth, a magazine writer, is completely unaware of what lies ahead when she joins in on the travels to Georgia to kill time and write an article about Hold House. Once these women are brought together under one roof, mysteries, revelations, and romance unfold in both practical and supernatural ways.
After we become acquainted with the main characters, Miles uses historical figures to weave fact with fiction and provide readers with the beauties and horrors of the Hold Plantation, as well as cross-cultural bonds of women living in early 19th-century Cherokee country. This part of the story is told through the diary of Anna Gamble, a Moravian missionary sent to the plantation to lead multi-race and Indian heathens to Christ.
Anna reveals that James Hold, the richest and most influential Cherokee chief, was a cruel man who committed atrocities that provoked revenge and murder — a man whose evils against his wives and the enslaved people created a plantation that was “obsessed with emotions of the past.”
By the end of the novel, I believe readers will appreciate the multiple layers that illustrate the relationships between Cherokees, free Black people, missionaries, and enslaved people — the influences of Cherokee slaveholding, religion, racism, U.S. and tribal governments, colonization, and capitalism. When all of this is mixed together, we are reminded that the present can never be separated from the past, no matter how much falsehood has taken place.
There are several supporting characters to keep up with throughout the novel that, at different points, help drive the plot. I’m always okay with stories not being perfect and having some messiness. In the end, the story felt very romanticized to me because the characters’ lives (both past and present) wrapped up too nicely.
I would have liked to see Cheyenne — the character who experienced the greatest transformation — have more weight beyond being a vessel for the past, and her transformation could have been mirrored in her personal life with family and friends.
Miles doesn’t shy away from or try to paint a rosy picture of what life was like on the plantation. I was familiar with enslaved people who were mixed with Native American and African American blood, but I never thought through all the implications that this presented. This is a very important piece of the slavery puzzle.
Overall, The Cherokee Rose is a hard-hitting cultural lesson, and I recommend it if you enjoy historical fiction. There is a great story to follow, if you don’t mind it ending in a perfectly wrapped box. I give a 4.5/5.0 stars. You’ll enjoy learning about this important piece of our past.
The Cherokee Rose is available on Amazon.
