Christopher Award-winning author Jerdine Nolen imagines a young
woman's journey from slavery to freedom in this intimate and powerful
novel that was named an ALA/YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults
nominee.
It is 1854 in Alexandria, Virginia. Eliza's mother has been sold away
and Eliza is left as a slave on a Virginia farm. It is Abbey, the cook,
who looks after Eliza, when she isn't taking care of the Mistress. Eliza
has only the quilt her mother left her and the stories her mother told
to keep her mother's memory close.
When the Mistress's health begins to fail and Eliza overhears the Master
talk of the Slave sale auction and of Eliza being traded, she takes to
the night. She follows the path and the words of the farmhand Old Joe:
"Travel the night. Sleep the day...Go east. Keep your back to the
setting of the sun. Come to the safe house with a candlelight in the
window...That gal, Harriet, she'll take you."
All the while, Eliza recites the stories her mother taught her as she
travels along her freedom road from Mary's Land to Pennsylvania to
Freedom's Gate in St. Catharines, Canada, where she finds not only her
freedom but also more than she could have hoped for.