Help a Bitch Out: The Worst Book Ever

Bitchery reader Lisa wants to commit a treasonous act of cruelty. So she asks our help. Duh.

I have long since been impressed with ability of the Bitchery to identify titles from the merest scraps of information.  Now, I find myself in need of their encyclopedic knowledge.

Some backstory; every year, my best friend and I celebrate the anniversary of when … well, when we became best friends.  Part of this celebration includes sending each other a tasteful floral arrangement and the tackiest gift we can possibly find.  I would like to give her a copy of one of the worst books I’ve ever read—not THE worst, because that would be a Cassie Edwards title, and the gift is supposed to be tacky, not cruel.  Unfortunately, I can only remember certain plot elements of this book, few names, and of course, I have no idea who the author was or what it was called.  It wasn’t even a proper romance, it was more along the lines of a ‘saga book’ in which there is a main family and multiple plot lines.

Here is what little I remember:

– I have a strong impression that it was part of a series
– I have a strong impression it took place on an island, possibly in the West Indies.  I seem to remember sugar cane.
– The daughter of the main family was kidnapped during a slave revolt, and ended up living with an escaped slave.  I believe her name was Melissa.  She dies before the end of the book, but her son by the slave comes to see her family at the very end.
– The husband of that family has a slave mistress, who is pregnant at the same time the man’s wife is supposedly pregnant.  After the mistress gives birth, the wife kills her and passes off the baby boy as her own (she was faking her pregnancy).  Later on, for reasons I don’t remember (she may have had another son) she sells the boy into slavery.
– There was a recently widowed father, whose wife was half-African, the product of an impetuous daughter of the ruling house who took a slave for a lover.  The daughter had two children who were ashamed of their mother’s heritage.
– There was a lot of sex, and a lot of violence, and it was truly a terribly written book
– I remember reading it in the mid-eighties, but I think it was a used copy my mom got from the used bookstore, so it’s likely older than that.

If the Bitchery can help me discover the name of this awful book, I would be forever grateful.  With any luck, I may be able to track it down, but if not, there’s always Cassie Edwards.

Man, just reading that description leaves me in despair. Yeesh. Poor friend.