Excerpt from The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Words came sweeping out of me the same way I'd seen Miss-bella pray, loud and clipped and beaten. I can't even remember now what I read, but I do remember that when I shunted the book onto the railing, he gestured at it. 'That's yours. To keep.' I didn't know what he meant, until he dragged me sideways like a lady's hem, and said I must start tearing out pages.

Swathes of time go dark on us, but it's not as if we have a say which ones. This whole incident comes back in one long bright line, though I wish I could swallow it down the way he made me swallow Candide. Paper mashing to gristle in my throat. Him tapering above, wondering aloud who'd taught one of his niggers to read. As if there weren't only two candidates on that whole estate. I ate until it felt the paper was digging a hole in me, then ate until all I wanted was to crawl into that same hole. But then he stopped short, as if something had pricked him, which he'd have to pull out and look at later.

By the time he did, I'd eaten so many pages of Candide, I vomited down my chest. He let me off easy. It was only later I even thought to wonder why.

Excerpted from The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins. Copyright © 2019 by Sara Collins. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.