The novel is set in Chicago during the Reconstruction Era. Her second novel, Balm: A Novel, was published in May 2015. In 2013, Perkins-Valdez was invited to write an introductory essay to the 37th edition of Solomon Northup's autobiography Twelve Years a Slave. The novel was selected by NPR in 2010 as one of five books published that year that was recommended to book clubs, for 'something to talk about'. The paperback edition became a bestseller. The book received positive reviews and notice as a debut novel.

It was published by HarperCollins in 2010 and in paperback the following year. They are influenced by spending time in a free state, and seeing free people of color there. It also explores the lives of three other mistresses of color, whom Lizzie comes to know at the resort. Wench features Lizzie, a young enslaved woman, and her complicated relationship with her master. Among the regular summer visitors to the Ohio resort in the antebellum period were Southern white planters and their enslaved mistresses of color. The iron-rich waters were thought to have medicinal value. It was noted as first being based at the buildings and grounds of a former, privately owned resort called Tawawa House, named for the 'yellow springs' in the area. Dubois and coming across a brief reference to the founding of Wilberforce University. Perkins-Valdez has said she was inspired to write her debut novel, Wench: A Novel (2010), after reading a biography of W.E.B. She is currently an associate professor at American University in Washington, DC. Perkins-Valdez has published short fiction and essays in such magazines as The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, StorySouth, African American Review, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, North Carolina Literary Review, Richard Wright Newsletter, and SLI: Studies in Literary Imagination. She completed a PhD in English at George Washington University in Washington, DC. She attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, earning a BA degree. She is chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is an American writer, best known for her debut novel Wench: A Novel (2010), which became a bestseller.

Wench dolen perkins valdez summary