Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “A gripping historical narrative exploring both the bounds of slavery and what it means to be truly free.” —Vanity Fair

Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his...

Master quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson, having uncovered letters in an antique desk written by slave Joanna, pieces together the story of the woman's life, learning of how she escaped only to be captured and sold again and created a quilt which hid clues about how to get back in order to be reunited with the son she was forced to leave behind.

"The Civil War South comes to vivid life in this electrifying story of a woman's plight and a legacy of deceit that echoes for generations. When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband's three-hundred-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days...

"When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad's leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can't bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah...

Alerted that her family may have had ties to the slaveholding South, Sylvia searches her attic for her great-grandmother's quilt, a log cabin with black central squares that, according to legend, was a sign of sanctuary to escaping slaves. She also discovers the memoir of her great-grandfather's spinster sister, Gerda Bergstrom. Gerda's record of the tumultuous years between 1853 and 1859 reveals not only the founding of Elm Creek Manor, but also...

The adventures of a young boy travelling down the Mississippi River with an escaped slave.

For black slaves Big Ben and Moses, the only thing worse than the daily cruelty of life on a Virginia plantation is the fear of being hunted down and tortured as runaways. But when Ben learns he is about to be sold to a new owner, he and Moses make the desperate choice to run. Evading brutal slave hunters and with only the light of the North Star as their guide, the pair make the grueling journey.

Presents the journal of a sixteen-year-old girl whose family operates a stop on the Underground Railroad.