SOURCE: "Friendship in Chains," in The New York Times, July 12, 1986, p. 12.

Lehmann-Haupt is a critic and novelist. In the following positive review, he offers praise for Dessa Rose.

As Sherley Anne Williams explains in an introductory note to Dessa Rose, her first novel, the story is based on two historical incidents. In one, she writes:

A pregnant black woman helped to lead an uprising on a coffle (a group of slaves chained together and herded, usually to market) in 1829 in Kentucky. Caught and convicted, she was sentenced to death; her hanging, however, was delayed until after the birth of her baby.

In the other, a white woman living on an isolated farm in North Carolina "was reported to have given sanctuary to runaway slaves" in 1830, or just a year later. Reading about these two incidents—the one in an essay by the black activist Angela Davis, the other...