The Indigo Girl

The Indigo Girl is a historical fiction novel that depicts the early struggles of Eliza Lucas, one of colonial America’s foremost figures in agricultural innovation, in her groundbreaking quest to produce indigo dye in South Carolina. Written by best-selling author Natasha Boyd, the novel was first published in 2017 by Blackstone Publishing; it was long-listed for the Southern Book Prize and a Southern Independent Booksellers’ Association Okra Pick.

Best known for writing romance novels, Boyd has collected a vast array of nominations for her works, which include her highly decorated The Butler Cove series. With The Indigo Girl, however, Boyd takes on the challenge of depicting colonial South Carolina from the viewpoint of a young girl left to manage her father’s plantations and navigate the skewed power dynamics of the enslavement era on her own. Committed and resilient, Eliza seeks to earn a measure of personal success and independence that has long been denied to women, and she finds a way to reach her goals despite the opposition of those who would prefer to see her fail.

This guide refers to the Blackstone Publishing e-book edition distributed by Google Play Books and published on October 3, 2017.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide include depictions of the dehumanizing and violent treatment of enslaved individuals that reflect the historical realities of the colonial period and the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved people. Additionally, the source material uses derogatory and offensive terms to refer to enslaved Africans and people of African descent. This guide replicates such language in direct quotes only when necessary to accurately convey the issues addressed in the original text.

Plot Summary

When Colonel Lucas receives orders to return to the British colony in Antigua and face growing Spanish hostilities, he decides not to leave his affairs to his plantation overseers. Instead, he names his 16-year-old daughter, Eliza, as the person in charge. Bright-eyed and ambitious, Eliza is more than willing to take up the challenge. As an avid horticulturist in her own right, she has plans to diversify her father’s crops and make the land as lucrative as possible. Her primary ambition is to create a dye from indigo, which is a notoriously difficult crop and a plant that she came to know in her childhood through her best friend, Benoit “Ben” Fortuné, an enslaved boy on her father’s plantation. Eliza believes that if she succeeds in cultivating the plant, her father might grant her wish, allowing her to remain in charge of his lands and continue to take an active part in their management. However, not everyone supports her new role, and both her mother and Starrat, a plantation overseer, thwart her ambitions in various ways. Soon, the Lucas family journeys to Charles Town to stay with their friends, the Pinckneys, while Eliza’s father prepares for his boat passage to Antigua. The Pinckneys openly support Eliza’s new position, and Charles Pinckney promises to help her succeed. The day before her father leaves, Eliza asks him to send Ben from Antigua so that he can help her make the indigo dye. However, her father initially refuses because Ben has been sold to an indigo maker in Montserrat.

With her father gone, Eliza returns to their Wappoo plantation and tries to grow indigo on her own. One early morning, Eliza hears drums on the creek, and her enslaved maid, Essie, tells her to stay inside. She sees boats go by, piloted by self-emancipated men who are looking for others to join in their rebellion. When no one answers their call, they leave the estate behind and move on. Weeks later, Eliza’s first batch of indigo crops dies from frost, and she urges her father to provide her with Indigofera seeds and a consultant so that she can try to cultivate indigo profitably. Later, while visiting the Pinckneys, Eliza and her mother meet a wealthy merchant named John Laurens, along with his son, Henry. When John and Henry insist on visiting Eliza’s plantation, Eliza worries about their intentions.

A few weeks later, Charles accompanies Eliza to visit the plantation overseer, Starrat, because the man is known for his brutality toward enslaved workers. As she tries to communicate her wishes to Starrat, Eliza requests to have a woman, Sarah, who was known to have indigo-dye-making knowledge, transferred to Wappoo. However, Sarah is furious at Eliza for transferring her, and as Eliza tries to cultivate viable indigo plants in the following weeks, Sarah deliberately unleashes pests to ruin the crops. Just as Eliza is collecting the few leaves that are still intact, John and Henry arrive, accompanied by two other men. While the Laurens are unimpressed with Eliza’s tendency to engage in physical labor, the two other men present themselves as Nicholas Cromwell, an indigo consultant, and his apprentice, Ben—Eliza’s childhood best friend.

Eliza is elated at Ben’s return, but the latter is initially hostile toward her for failing to teach the enslaved workers to read as she taught him when they were children. Saddened but not discouraged, she builds a schoolroom to teach the local enslaved people to read and follows Ben and Cromwell around the plantation, trying to learn as much as she can from their knowledge. After Cromwell makes it known that John intends to marry Eliza, an altercation arises between Cromwell and Sarah, and Eliza is quick to bar the Laurens from her plantation. This decision ruins her reputation in town. The indigo crops finally flourish, and Eliza is called to the King’s Birthday Ball in Charles Town just as the dye-making process is about to begin. She worries about leaving, especially because Cromwell has been making odd requests to delay the process. When she returns, her fears are confirmed. The indigo dye batch is ruined. Cromwell blames Ben, and Ben confirms that he was at fault. When Eliza accuses Ben of betraying her and denying her freedom by thwarting her efforts to make indigo dye, Ben becomes a fugitive and tries to join the Spanish army in an effort to emancipate himself. Eliza sends Quash, her family’s enslaved driver, to retrieve Ben, but Quash is unsuccessful; although he encounters Ben during a storm, Ben drowns in the river.

Devastated at the loss, Eliza becomes listless, only to become enraged when she finds out that Cromwell schemed with her mother to ruin the dye in an effort to compel the family to return to Antigua. Just as Eliza begins to question whether she should continue her venture with indigo, she receives news that her dear friend Mrs. Pinckney has become ill. When Eliza visits her, Mrs. Pinckney admits that she is dying. She gives Eliza permission to pursue Charles when he becomes a widower since she knows that Eliza has been harboring feelings for him. When Eliza returns to Wappoo, she gives indigo one final chance since her brother is planning to retrieve the family and settle the plantation’s accounts before their departure to Antigua. Death comes for Mrs. Pinckney soon after. In the summer, Eliza works alongside Quash and the other enslaved people on the plantation and finally succeeds in making a six-pound batch of indigo dye that Charles confirms is of the highest quality. Instead of returning to Antigua, Eliza chooses to remain in South Carolina and proposes to Charles, who readily agrees to marry her.