Even though Sewing Annie Coats and her son, Gabriel, have managed to buy their freedom, their lives are still marked by constant struggle and sacrifice. Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, where the Coatses operate a tailor's shop and laundry, is supposed to be a "promised land" for former slaves, but it is effectively a frontier town, gritty and dangerous, with no laws protecting black people.The remarkable emotional energy with which the Coatses...

A year has passed and Hadassah has donned veils to conceal her identity and the scars that now mark her body. Believed dead, she works helping a doctor in the poor section of the city and becomes skilled at healing through faith. When Julia falls ill, Hadassah faces a difficult decision: should she return to the Valerian household, risking exposure and death? The flame between Hadassah and Marcus is rekindled, though Marcus continues to search for...

Born in West Africa in the mid-eighteenth century, Maryam Prescilla Grace--a.k.a "Momma Grace" will live a long, wondrous life marked by hardship, oppression, opportunity, and love. Though she will be "gifted" various names, her birth name is known to her alone. Over the course of 100-plus years, she survives capture, enslavement by several property owners, the Atlantic crossing when she is only eleven years of age, and a brief stint as a pirate's...

A Voice in the Wind transports readers back to Jerusalem during the first Jewish-Roman War. Following the prides and passions of a group of Jews, Romans and Barbarians, the story centers on an ill-fated romance between a steadfast slave girl, Hadassah, and Marcus, the brother of her owner. Is it possible for their love to flourish considering not only their different stations in life, but also Hadassah's unrelenting faith and Marcus's lack of belief?...

"The beloved daughter of Jewish captives in Babylon, Keren is sold into Daniel's household to help her family survive. She becomes Daniel's most trusted scribe, while taking lessons and swordsmanship training alongside Daniel's sons and their best friend, Jared. But after a tragic accident changes the course of her life, Keren finds herself in a foreign country, charged with a mysterious task: teaching a shepherd boy how to become a lord. When she...

Born on a plantation but set apart from the others by her mother's position as a medicine woman, a young slave is forced to leave home at eighteen and unexpectedly finds herself in an infamously cruel jail. Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. Instead she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil's Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured,...

"André Brink--'one of South Africa's greatest novelists' (The Telegraph)--gives us his most powerful novel yet; the truly unforgettable story of a female slave, and her fierce determination to survive and to be free"--Amazon.

It's 1894. Jordan Wallace and Sadie Wagner appear to have little in common. Jordan, a middle-aged black teacher, lives in segregated Chicago. Two thousand miles away, Sadie, the white wife of an ambitious German businessman, lives in more tolerant Oakland, California. But years ago, their families intertwined on a plantation in Virginia. There, Jordan's and Sadie's mothers developed a bond stronger than blood, despite the fact that one was enslaved...

"An historical and imaginative tour-de-force, WAKE brings to light for the first time the existence of enslaved black women warriors, whose stories can be traced by carefully scrutinizing historical records; and where the historical record goes silent, WAKE reconstructs the likely past of two female rebels, Adono and Alele, on the slave ship The Unity. WAKE is a graphic novel that offers invaluable insight into the struggle to survive whole as a black...