Ocean State Libraries

2004: Lina Sparrow, an artist's daughter, is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. 1852: Josephine, a seventeen-year-old slave, tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm - an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. Lina's search to find a plaintiff for her case will introduce her to Josephine's story. Was she the real talent behind her mistress's now-famous...

March, 1850. In the tense days before the Civil War, a slave breakout in the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore sets loose a riveting drama of violence, hope, and redemption among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks. Liz Spocott, a beautiful runaway slave, shot and near death, is wracked by disturbing visions of the future as she lies shackled to an old woman in the prison attic of the notorious...

"From Percival Everett-a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards-comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby...

Master quilter Sylvia Compson discovers a stash of letters in the attic of Elm Creek Manor and traces a tale back to 1859. An escaped slave, Joanna, spent a brief period at Elm Creek Farm until she was captured and returned to bondage, leaving her son in the care of the Bergstrom family. If Sylvia is to determine the fate of Joanna and her son, she must rely on one important clue-- the meticulous heirloom quilt Joanna stitched and left behind.

Augustus Cain faces a past he wants to forget, a present without prospect or fortune, and an uncertain future marred by the loss of his most prized possession: the horse that has been his working companion for years. He is also a man haunted by a terrible skill-the ability to track people who don't want to be found. Rosetta is a runaway slave fueled by the passion and determination only a mother can feel. She bears the scars-inside and out-of a...

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 seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...

"It is 1864 and Eliza Spooner's husband Will has joined the Kansas volunteers to fight the Confederates, leaving her with their two children and in charge of their home and land. Eliza is confident that he will return home, and she helps pass the months making a special quilt to keep Will warm during his winter months in the army. When the unthinkable happens, she takes in a a woman and child who have been left alone and made vulnerable by the war,...

In the year 1864, young Addy & her mother try to escape slavery by fleeing to the North after her father is sold again & they are separated. After their escape from North Carolina to Philadelphia in the summer of 1864, Addy and her mother begin their new life as free people as her mother gets a paying job and Addy goes to school and learns a lesson in true friendship. Addy Walker is a proud, courageous girl growing up in 1864, during the midst of...

Tells of the Civil War's first contraband camp that began when three escaped slaves were granted protection at a Union-held fort, prompting runaway slaves to seek freedom there and build the country's first African American community.