Try free for 30 days

  • Conjure Women

  • By: Afia Atakora
  • Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
  • Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (5 ratings)

1 credit a month to use on any title, yours to keep (you’ll use your first credit on this title).
Stream or download thousands of included titles.
Access to exclusive deals and discounts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
Conjure Women cover art

Conjure Women

By: Afia Atakora
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Try for $0.00

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $27.33

Buy Now for $27.33

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

A Stylist Best Book of 2020

You’re free to decide your future. But how do you escape the ghosts of the past?

A stunning debut novel with echoes of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and Sara Collins’ The Confessions of Frannie Langton

The pale-skinned, black-eyed baby is a bad omen. That’s one thing the people on the old plantation are sure of. The other is that Miss Rue – midwife, healer, crafter of curses – will know what to do.

But for once Rue doesn’t know. Times have changed since her mother Miss May Belle held the power to influence the life and death of her fellow slaves. Freedom has come. The master’s Big House lies in ruins. But this new world brings new dangers, and Rue’s old magic may be no match for them.

When sickness sweeps across her tight-knit community, Rue finds herself the focus of suspicion. What secrets does she keep amidst the charred remains of the Big House? Which spells has she conjured to threaten their children? And why is she so wary of the charismatic preacher man who promises to save them all?

Rue understands fear. It has shaped her life and her mother’s before her. And now she knows she must face her fears – and her ghosts – to find a new way forward for herself and her people.

Conjure Women is a story of the lengths we’ll go to save the ones we love, from a stunning voice in fiction.

©2020 Afia Atakora (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic Reviews

"This novel, written in lush, irresistible, and poetic prose, took me into the lives of people in another time and place – into their loves, nightmares, dreams, their unexpected ties – and into the hearts of women I could otherwise never know. I was transported." (Amy Bloom, New York Times best-selling author of White Houses)

"With comparisons to Beloved and Homegoing, this debut is an era-spanning tale that originates in the American Civil War and beyond." (Stylist)

"If you are grieving for Toni Morrison, Afia Atakora is the young writer to read now: the kind of historical novelist who makes you believe she must have somehow seen the places she describes and known these characters herself. Her astonishing debut takes the reader to a Reconstruction-era Southern plantation, where two little girls - the enslaved child of the local healer and the planter’s cloistered daughter - become unlikely friends. Conjure Women illuminates an unfamiliar corner of Civil War history and brings to life an indelible character whose talents, from midwifery to voodoo, will yield her own unconventional path to power and freedom." (Nell Freudenberger, author of Lost and Wanted)

What listeners say about Conjure Women

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.