Letitia holds nothing more dear than the papers that prove she is no longer a slave. Nancy Hawkins is loathe to leave her settled life for the treacherous journey by wagon train, but she will follow her husband anywhere. Betsy is a Kalapuya Indian, the last remnant of a once proud tribe in the Willamette Valley in Oregon territory. As season turns to season, suspicion turns to friendship, and fear turns to courage, three spirited women will discover...

Young and recently widowed, Jasmine Houston confronts the vital issues of freedom and slavery, love and hate, life and death. As Jasmine's opposition to slavery grows and her friendship with her bachelor brother-in-law Nolan deepens, her Massachusetts horse farm soon becomes a stop for the Underground Railroad. With both her mother and mammy dying, she and her young son rush to the family plantation in Mississippi--escorted by Nolan. Keeping a death-bed...

"In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother,...

The story of two different families, headed by a former slave and by a Quaker, who settle in Texas during the Civil War. In 1863, as the War Between the States creeps inevitably toward its bloody conclusion, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson ventures west into unknown territory with this wife, Mary, and their three children, searching for a life and a future. But their dreams are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the Johnsons' settlement...

"Based on the true story of Mary Bowser, a freed slave who returns to Virginia to spy on the Confederates, The secrets of Mary Bowser is the powerful story of a woman who must sacrifice her freedom to truly achieve it"--

"Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a life of her own, and a future for her family. When she moves to Edenton, North Carolina from the plantation where she was born, she is free, newly married, and ready to follow her dreams. As the demands of lifepull Josephine's attention-deepening her marriage, mothering her daughters, supporting her grandmother-she struggles to balance her real estate aspirations with the realities of keeping life going...

Our Nig is a classic of African American Literature that has proven to be an enduring contribution to our understanding of free blacks in the nineteenth century. Originally published in 1859, it was neglected for over a hundred years and is now the subject of renewed scholarly interest. A fascinating fusion of two literary modes of the nineteenth century--the sentimental novel and the slave narrative--Our Nig traces the trials and tribulations of...