None of this is real, Mira reminded herself as she went through the park. None of what she saw was real; Alden had it built for show. Mira decided to walk around first. The property was overwhelming in its scope. The majority of the park was structured to be a replication of an actual antebellum-era plantation and all the workers performed their varying roles throughout the day as guests walked around and watched. The exceptions were the spirits bar that had been built along with a restaurant serving upscale renditions of Southern fare. Here was where the experience veered from its attempts at authenticity. A couple of photo booths had been set up where guests could take pictures dressed up in their own antebellum-era outfits. A group of women dressed in their drop-shoulder sleeves and hoop skirts laughed as they skimmed the photo strips they paid for. Along with photos, a music booth with a sign—SING YOUR HOLLER SONG—marked the front. For a dollar, guests could sit in the booth, pick one of the listed field holler songs, and listen. Once they were ready, they pressed a button that would record them mimicking the lyrics. When they were done, they could play it back, hearing a call-and-response between the audio recording and the singer.

Mira recognized the spot on the map for the Big House, but there were spots for other things—the rows of slave cabins, the overseer’s house, the gardens, the kitchen, the washhouse, a smokehouse, as well as the tobacco fields. She went to the slave cabins first. A series of eight newly constructed cabins were separated into two rows. The path was constructed such that a person could walk around the circumference of the cabins and stop to peer into each one as they read a corresponding sign that talked about the distinct features of slave life. One sign mentioned that the cabin’s construction was made of cedarwood. None of the signs had names of any of the people who’d lived and died on the grounds. It had all been erased.

Mira moved up close to smell the cabin’s exterior. The earthiness of cedar overpowered the air and she backed away, choosing to peer in the window. Inside the cabin, wooden furniture had been placed strategically around the interior—a bed frame edged against the wall, and on the opposite were a table and several chairs. Mira walked over to the entranceway, where she noticed the air was cooler inside.

Is that air-conditioning? she wondered, and sure enough, she saw the air vents up above, painted to match the same hue as the wood to appear unnoticeable.

“These don’t seem so bad. Hell, I could live in something like this,” Mira heard an older man say as she passed him by, leaving the slave cabins to see the rest of the grounds.