A magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially...

"A general's wife and a slave girl forge a friendship that transcends race, culture, and the crucible of Civil War. Mary Anna Custis Lee is a great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, wife of Confederate General Robert E Lee, and heiress to Virginia's storied Arlington house and General Washington's personal belongings. Born in bondage at Arlington, Selina Norris Gray learns to read and write in the schoolroom Mary and her mother keep for the slave...

"Jamie Pyke, son of the master of Tall Oaks plantation and his kitchen slave, is passing as a wealthy white aristocrat in Philadelphia. His secret identity is threatened, putting his life in grave danger, when he is compelled by a promise to travel back to the South to rescue a beloved boy servant named Pan who has been kidnapped and sold into slavery. The innocent child seems unlikely to survive life in the quarters, but he finds an ally in the compassionate...