THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS SPOILERS for the novel The Blueprint by Rae Giana Rashad.
Bastien’s Home on Lake Travis in Austin, TX
One of the settings in The Blueprint by Rae Giana Rashad is a home on Lake Travis in Austin, Texas. The luxurious waterfront estate is prison for the main character Solenne Bonet. The year is 2030, and the United States hasn’t existed since Civil War II ended in the 1960s. The southern states still do exist and are known by their original names—Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, etc..,—but they’re part of a country now called The Order.
Solenne Bonet, like almost all Black women living in The Order, is trapped in an institution of enslavement called The Assignment System. In this system, when a Black woman comes of age, she is legally assigned (by an algorithm) to a work contract with a white man. When that contract ends, the algorithm reassigns her to a marriage contract with a Black man. Bastien, a white man and powerful government official, becomes infatuated with Solenne while her contract belongs to another white man. He reassigns Solenne’s contract to himself and forces her into a lifelong relationship. Their story echoes Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
The Gift of the Pier – Chapter 1
Solenne is 20 years old when the novel begins. Bastien has showered her with gifts since she was fifteen. One of these so-called gifts is a pier on his property that goes out into Lake Travis. The pier is named after Solenne. In reality, her pier isn’t much of a gift. It’s really her prison-yard boundary. “Don’t go past your pier today,” Bastien says on his way out the door on page 6.
The Pier – Deep Dive Number One – Narrative Positioning
Solenne’s pier appears in two scenes of The Blueprint, one at the beginning and another at the end.
This narrative positioning is intriguingly deliberate. Solenne’s pier at Bastien’s home ends up functioning inside the narrative like a pier does in real life. It is an arrival point, and it is a departure point for the reader. To enter the story, the reader steps onto the pier with Solenne in Chapter 1. Just before leaving the story, the reader experiences another pier scene in Chapter 43.
The Pier – Deep Dive Number Two – Henriette
The Blueprint contains a story within a story. Solenne writes the biography of her ancestor Henriette beginning with how she survived the Middle Passage with her brother in 1801. Henriette’s biography not only begins onboard a ship, it ends on one too. The ship at the end of her biography is the one that takes her to freedom.
Solenne’s pier on Lake Travis is more than just a pier in the context of Henriette’s biography. Figuratively, it is an echo of the docks in New Orleans where L’Aliénor, the ship Henriette was trafficked on, moored after crossing the Atlantic. It is an echo of the dock she walked on to get to the ship Philadelphia, which took her and two of her children to freedom.
Solenne feels particularly connected to Henriette when she’s on her pier on Lake Travis. On pages 7 and 8 of Chapter 1, she sees a momentary reflection on the water, “the Fulani girl’s reflection before the waves stole it.” This reflection is of Henriette and Solenne at the same time, both”distorted and alone, forever fifteen.”
The final pier scene is on pages 275 and 276 in Chapter 43. While Solenne is out there, a delivery boat arrives full of illegally caught female crabs that Bastien specially ordered because “they are sweeter and more delicate.” With a swift kick, Solenne frees the crabs: “A sweep of my foot and the cooler released the ice-stunned bodies into the water.”
There’s a lot to unpack here. This rebellious kick literally destroys Bastien’s order, which I read as a metaphor for how Solenne will destroy Bastien’s place in The Order in the next two chapters.
In the final two chapters, Solenne bargains with Bastien. She gives up all rights to pursue asylum in Lousiana in exchange for stopping Proposition 1107 (a law like the Fugitive Slave Act), for freeing her mother, for freeing Evie, the daughter she’s carrying, and ensuring that her friend Delana stays free.
The Pier – Bastien is a Ship Metaphorically
One of the most interesting extensions of Solenne’s pier scenes occurs in the Chapter 12 scene where Solenne first meets Bastien. She describes him as a ship, and in the simile she uses she becomes the pier. On page 79, she says, “His size reached me first, as a ship does when standing on a pier watching it dock.”
Bastien as a ship. Solenne as a pier. That is really interesting because Bastien worries throughout the whole book about the water levels of Lake Travis. There’s a drought, and the lake is drying up. It’s easier to understand his worry as non-ecological with Solenne’s simile in mind because if the water disappears, how does a ship (or a man who is figuratively a ship) move? What if the water disappears, and he can’t reach his pier, aka Solenne? Does the drought bother him because it’s like an omen? If the water disappears, there’s no need for a ship. He’ll be decommissioned or stuck on the lakebed, beached or run aground.
Practically, the water disappearing might bother him because it makes Solenne’s pier a moving boundary. The pier has to move with the receding lake edge, which means Solenne’s prison is slowing expanding every year of the drought.
How to Annotate the Pier In Your Copy of The Blueprint by Rae Gianna Rashad
In my book, I used 7 purple tabs, and I placed them all on the bottom corner of each page where the pier is mentioned.
I annotated the first edition hardcover copy of The Blueprint. If you’re annotating the paperback, our pages may differ a little.
- Tab 1: Place this one on your tab key page.
- Tab 2: Chapter 1, p 6
- Tab 3: Chapter 1, p 7
- Tab 4: Chapter 1, p 8
- Tab 5: Chapter 12, p 79
- Tab 6: Chapter 43, p 275
- Tab 7: Chapter 43, p 276
A Note:
When The Blueprint came out in 2024, Shelbey and The Bookclub suggested I read it. I kept it on my TBR, and I am so glad finally read it this year. I was floored by it. Not a single word feels unconsidered in this beautifully written speculative fiction novel. Shelbey never misses when it comes to book recommendations for me. She reads so widely and can really dial in the recs. If you aren’t already, I think you should become one of the 18.3K people who currently follow her on BookTube. https://www.youtube.com/@shelbeyandthebookclub
Annotate With Sara 