BookBrowse Reviews The Davenports by Krystal Marquis

BookBrowse:

Krystal Marquis transports readers to Chicago's early-20th-century Black elite in her swoon-worthy debut.

Krystal Marquis's young adult historical debut novel, The Davenports, strikes just the right balance between fluffy fare and weightier topics. Set in 1910 amid the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Chicago's Black elite, the novel is, at its heart, about the friendships that tie together four young women, as well as the romances that threaten to tear those female relationships apart.

Sisters Olivia and Helen Davenport couldn't be more different. Olivia, a year older and in society for a year already, is having trouble finding a suitable partner, one who both satisfies her parents' exacting standards and speaks to her romantic heart: "It was difficult to find eligible gentlemen—born into the right family, educated, and set to inherit a large fortune—who were also Black." Helen is in no hurry to marry; her first love will always be the garage where she spends time with their brother John, tinkering with the fine carriages upon which her father built his manufacturing fortune (see Beyond the Book). John, who's set to inherit the family business, is trying desperately to bring it into the 20th century with a new line of "horseless carriages"—and Helen is more than happy to try her hand at automobile repair, too.

The Davenports' closest friends, the Tremaines, have a daughter who's in the same age range as Olivia and Helen, but for her the stakes are even higher. Ruby's father is running for mayor of Chicago and has put the family fortune on the line to finance his campaign, making it more critical than ever for her to make a good (i.e., lucrative) match. By contrast, falling in love is hardly the highest priority for Amy-Rose, who grew up alongside the Davenports and is now Helen and Olivia's ladies' maid. The aspiring business woman has been saving money and, once the Davenport girls are safely married off, she plans to open a beauty salon serving the particular needs of Black women's hair.

These four young women all have clear ideas of what they want—or should want—but life, along with the busy social season, has a way of making other plans. After accidentally wandering into a lecture on civil rights, Olivia becomes absorbed by politics—and by a certain young lawyer who's leading the charge. Helen can't stop thinking about the handsome, intelligent British gentleman who is, by all accounts, Olivia's best marriage prospect. Both Ruby and Amy-Rose have been infatuated with John Davenport since childhood. But one knows that their potential match is less than suitable, and the other might find that her heart is drawn elsewhere.

If all this sounds like standard historical romance, you're right—The Davenports is full of beautiful gowns, high society gossip, fabulous balls and more than a little scandal. But given the time period and the identities of the characters (Mr. Davenport, for example, was formerly enslaved and has yet to be reunited with his brother), Marquis's debut also carries historic heft. In the process of growing her political awareness, Olivia learns about race riots in nearby Springfield just two years earlier, during which the city's Black residents were attacked by a white mob who killed eight people, permanently harmed Black-owned businesses and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of property damage. There's a good chance readers of this novel will be hearing about this ugly episode in American history for the first time, too. The frothy romances and shifting friendships play out in a moment and place where the Black characters feel relatively free of racism and oppression, though as Olivia comes to learn, that freedom is both hard-won and fragile. Rumors of growing Southern violence and encroaching Jim Crow laws cast a looming threat over everything the Davenports and Tremaines—not to mention other families in their social circle—have fought so hard to attain.

Marquis's novel is well-grounded in its history, although at times the characters' attitudes and dialogue can feel somewhat anachronistically modern ("You need to worry about you," one character admonishes another), and, given the novel's target audience of teen readers, it might have benefited from additional historical context in a more substantial author's note or afterword. In the end, though, what will keep readers turning pages are the novel's intertwining relationships and suspenseful shifts in love and loyalties. Don't expect everything to be wrapped up neatly here, however—this is the start of a series, and although some characters may have found their happily ever after, others are only starting on their journeys. Given the current popularity of television costume dramas, The Davenports seems ripe for adaptation—it's fun to imagine how the characters and settings of this bingeworthy debut would translate to the screen.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in February 2023, and has been updated for the January 2024 edition. Click here to go to this issue.