Mamba's Daughters: A Novel of Charleston

A novel written in the early 20th century. It follows Mamba, an aging Black waterfront woman, as she leverages charm, cunning, and social performance to secure a future for her daughter Hagar and granddaughter Lissa by attaching herself to Charleston’s genteel Wentworths and, later, the status-seeking Atkinsons. In parallel, it tracks the coming-of-age struggles of Saint Wentworth, a sensitive misfit searching for purpose. The book explores class, race, and survival across Charleston’s drawing rooms, kitchens, and docks. The opening of the novel shows Mamba’s calculated “invasion” of the Wentworth household, beginning with a bouquet of roses for young Polly and continuing through strategic kindnesses, songs with the family’s old servant Maum Netta, and conspicuous services that bind the genteel widow and her children to her. As years pass, Saint falters at school and work while Mamba becomes a quiet fixture at soirées and in the kitchen, then helps run a summer boardinghouse where a comic crisis—the judge losing his teeth—becomes her chance to acquire a set of teeth and a new persona. Returning to town, she boldly asks the Wentworths for recommendations and parlayed respectability, which lands her as nurse in the Atkinson household. Meanwhile, Saint finally finds work as a commissary clerk at a phosphate camp under the practical mentorship of Mr. Raymond, and in the Black Quarter Mamba’s daughter Hagar—prone to trouble despite her love for little Lissa—gets cheated by river firemen, seizes one on the wharf, and a tense fight breaks out as onlookers gather.