"The son of a slave owner and a colonel impregnates a young slave and sends her away so no one will find out—shocking!
"The son of a slave owner and a colonel impregnates a young slave and sends her away so no one will find out—shocking! The wall clock struck three in the morning when Benedita woke with a start. Her hands trembled beneath the white sheets covering the narrow bed in the small room next to her employers' suite. A violent wave of nausea made her rush to the porcelain basin in the corner of the room. It was the third time that week. At seventeen, the girl with cinnamon-colored skin and eyes as large as ripe jaboticaba berries still didn't fully understand the changes in her body, but an inner voice whispered truths she feared to accept. The Santa Rita Farm stretched for leagues of fertile land in the interior of São Paulo state. Unlike neighboring properties, where the whip sang at dawn, a peculiar atmosphere reigned there. Colonel Américo Vasconcelos and his wife, Dona Quitéria, were known as open-hearted masters, allowing the enslaved to cultivate their fields and keep their...