"In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis, the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few precious items as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley's survival. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the bag in spare yet haunting language--including Rose's wish...

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 startling and eye-opening look into America's first family, and the powerful narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington's runaway slave who risked it all to escape the nation's capital and reach freedom.

"'My parents were slaves in New York State. My master's sons-in-law . . . came into the garden where my sister and I were playing among the currant bushes, tied their handkerchiefs over our mouths, carried us to a vessel, put us in the hold, and sailed up the river. I know not how far nor how long -- it was dark there all the time.' These words, recorded by Benjamin Drew in 1855, provide Sophia Burthen's account of her arrival as an enslaved person...

"In The souls of womenfolk, Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh argues that woman-gendered cosmologies and experiences from the Upper Guinea Coast played a distinct role in shaping the religious consciousness and practices of enslaved communities in the Lower South, and that this process took place concurrently as enslaved peoples in the U.S. South interpreted their new contexts through the cosmological frameworks of their foreparents, while acquiring, innovating,...

"The Civil War South comes to vivid life in this electrifying story of a woman's plight and a legacy of deceit that echoes for generations. When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband's three-hundred-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days...

Addy Walker's family is planning a dangerous escape from slavery during the summer of 1864. But before they can leave, the most terrible thing Addy can imagine happens--her Poppa and her brother, Sam, are sold! Addy and her Momma decide they must head out on their own. Although the road to freedom is difficult, Addy's new life brings new friends, school, and even the opportunity to help others. But when will her family be reunited?

A gripping, radically intimate debut novel about a group of enslaved women staging a covert rebellion against their owners. On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys -- as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself -- have decided to turn around the farm's bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired...