It is known that we come into this world and leave it in the same way: alone. But for Eng and Chang Bunker, the opposite was true. Born conjoined at the midsection by a thin strip of flesh, they were the birth of the label “Siamese twins” and were shown around the world as oddities, adopting a showmen-like nature that allowed them to wow their fans and preserve what little of their privacy they could.

When we meet these men, it is in early-1840s North Carolina, where they have just erected a stately farmhouse full of European treasures from their worldly adventures. Having escaped their poor roots in Siam (now Thailand) and the clutches of exploitative managers, they have a single goal in mind: marriage. But who in the conservative, prejudiced South would get involved with two non-white brothers, often called “beasts” by the media?

Enter Sarah and Adelaide Yates, sisters marred by scandal, now entering their second decade and desperately watching as their prospects for marriage start to dry up.

Eng and Chang begin to court Sarah and Adelaide, despite the warnings from their conservative father, who fears the life of judgment and mockery the girls will face. Commonalities are found quickly. Adelaide (Addie) is notably the more beautiful of the sisters, and her temperament --- bold, brassy and take-charge --- matches that of Chang, the more outspoken brother, whose charm hides a mercurial temper. Sarah (Sallie) is the plainer, stouter of the two, and her looks have relegated her to the sidelines, where she takes pleasure in gardening and reading. In Eng, who is quiet, patient and accustomed to following his brother’s orders, she sees for the first time an opportunity for more.

"This outstanding novel, which very well could have read like a tabloid in a lesser author’s hands, is expansive in its intimacy and intellectual in its heart as it celebrates the extraordinary gift of an ordinary life."

Acknowledging that the siblings will forever face limited prospects in others, the foursome embarks on a quiet engagement followed by a joint wedding. It is the spectacle of the season, with everyone from gossipy neighbors to religious leaders to op-eds chiming in, either decrying the “bestiality” of the union or lambasting the girls’ parents. The one question on everyone’s mind is: How will the couples consummate their unions? The answer is more simple than you might think: a double-wide bed, a sheet thrown over a brother’s head, and the promise that everyone will dissociate for as long as possible. 

The surprising truth is that, despite a few initial obstacles, marriage comes quite easily to both couples. However, our focus is on Sallie, whose early fears and hesitancy begin to fade as she and Eng strike up a quiet, appreciative companionship. Within the year, both women are pregnant. Their babies, who they worry may be born conjoined as well, are set to arrive only weeks apart. Now, with families to care for and children to love, Sallie begins to truly come into her own and enjoy her life.

But as any parent will tell you, adding a third member to your family invites scores of complications, difficult choices and painful prioritizing…and that’s if you’re lucky enough not to share a marital bed with your sister and her husband. Before long, the couples’ careful unions grow fractious, with brothers fighting one day and sisters the next. Sallie, long accustomed to living in her sister’s shadow, begins to grate at the control that Chang and Addie wield over the household. Eng, meanwhile, grows weary of his brother’s drinking problem and subsequent condescension. Though each sibling has never known a life without the other, the couples find that they are diametrically opposed on most everything from child-rearing to religion, slave-owning to fame.

All the while, the South also begins to fracture over debates of slavery and its legality. Curiously to Sallie, who has started to open her eyes to the inequity of the practice that has long sustained her people, Eng and Chang are increasing their own slave count. This forces Sallie to ask: How can two men, who essentially were bought and sold, be so callous in their ownership of others?

As Sallie navigates these myriad rifts and the painful minutiae of life in a foursome, she watches as her life expands and contracts in equal measure. With their growing families (collectively, the brothers and sisters would go on to have 21 children), the couples are able to populate and fill their own self-contained world. They limit the label of “family” just to the four of them and their children, not the wider branches from which they had sprouted.

Sallie grows ever wiser to the ways of the world through her freedom, and she once astutely remarks that their distance from society “echoed a broader pattern. Though Eng and Chang were wealthy and well-connected, their place in society was tenuous, secured only by their willingness to embrace the habits of Southern gentry…. Still, [p]oor whites seethed that these ‘colored’ men had succeeded where they had not.” Surely pained by this knowledge, the brothers become even more quarrelsome, as do the sisters.

The foursome makes the difficult decision to separate, with Addie living in one house, Sallie in another, and the brothers forced to travel back and forth every three days. With this division comes a glorious freedom that Sallie thought was impossible. Left to her own devices for three days, she is able to enjoy her life with her children, indulge in her reading, and sleep alone. When her husband returns, she is more amorous for him and more capable of performing her wifely duties, even as Chang begins to turn ugly and cruel. Her peace, though, is short-lived. Their futures hold tragedies, alliances and rifts, but all that will pale in comparison to what is coming for the South: war. 

Pairing the foursome’s journey with that of the South, Christina Baker Kline paints an evocative portrait not just of the conjoined twins and their sister wives, but of marriage and the South itself. It’s an ambitious project but an earned one as well: Kline is a distant cousin of Sarah and Adelaide Yates. She writes tenderly and compassionately about her ancestors, giving them the voice and attention they have never had before. Entwining this depiction with the history and contradictions of the South, she writes honestly about moral blind spots, desperate choices, and very real social repercussions without flattening the people who lived through them.

Kline’s choice to tell this story from Sallie's perspective is a resounding success. Her journey from unquestioning acceptance and forced discomfort to a clearer understanding of her shifting time forms the book’s most deeply compelling throughline. This outstanding novel, which very well could have read like a tabloid in a lesser author’s hands, is expansive in its intimacy and intellectual in its heart as it celebrates the extraordinary gift of an ordinary life.