Beneath a Golden Veil

I absolutely loved Isabel's saga! Wow, did that girl have some incredible secrets!! Isabel's part of the story is five-star, all the way.

When it comes to side characters, some are strong (Alden) but others are weaker. The villains are all incredibly one-dimensional, rapists and murderers and bigamists. This really gouged my enjoyment, but Isabel's story overshadowed it so well that I had no trouble getting on to the next scene.

There are various sub-plots which deal often with Isabel's deep identification with abolition and the various slaves she runs across during the story. The emotional scenes of longing for freedom and the deep ramifications of having one's entire future devoured by someone else's plans was spot-on and so well written.

Things I had a hard time believing:
—all slaves in the story had no dialect and managed to scrabble up some basic form of education/marketable skills
—a newborn having golden-hazel eyes directly after birth
—a child of eight speaking like a lawyer and reading Moby-Dick
—a rich white slaveowner managing to conceal his illiteracy
—literally every slaveowner is the worst of the worst and has no redeeming qualities or even any conflict of interest in their actions
—People who help slaveowners or who think twice about abolition are tossed in the emotional suspect pool (there was some form of justification for this at an emotional twist later in the story, but from Alden's POV it remained rather problematic, especially when aimed at people who were completely innocent of such thoughts/simply thinking things over
—a child who is under 1/8 black being recognizably black in California....it seemed really unlikely, where Mexicans are so common, that he wouldn't have instead been thought Spanish, even if he was as dark as described. (“Throwback kids” are not proven by science to the extent the story details and remain an unproven myth.) and the story strongly hinted that he was instead 1/16 because of the description of the enslaved grandmother)
—but then a villain with a completely seared conscience, murder on his hands, and an obsessed stalker, ...major spoiler... would tie a woman he had obsessed over controlling to a bedpost and then simply fail to rape her and instead go get drunk was COMPLETELY out of character and I felt was a cop-out that merely gave the good guys time to regroup. so I had a really hard time believing that outcome. Also that anyone in a small town where a trial had just been held wouldn't recognize one of the plaintiffs from the trial on sight. (Prime entertainment, right there.)

Anyway, despite the ways that small Isaac's story and background—as illegitimate son of one of the white villains—bugged me and made me question it, he was an endearing child and I think his story would have raised zero questions with me if he had instead been 1/4 black and ten to twelve years old.

Alden was a good lead though I'd have preferred his emotions would have been as deeply excavated as Isabel's were...I think if he'd been that well explored, I'd have give it five stars despite all the suspension of belief.

I loved the vivid descriptions of California and the mining town. So colorful and well done!

Anyone should read this story just for Isabel's saga.

Narration: I listened to the audiobook version. I grew tired of the shrill portrayal of half of the voices, but otherwise the narration is very well done. Four stars for that.