Slavery

This novel is a fictionalized story of a real woman who was born into slavery in 1813. For this reason, slavery becomes a central theme to the novel as the author uses real history to bring her story to life. Slavery was legal in the United States for more than a hundred years, coming to the original colonies with the first settlers. By 1825, when this novel opens, slavery had begun to be abolished in the northern states of the country, but was still growing in the southern states and into the new territories being added to the country.

Harriet is eleven in 1825, a child left orphaned with the death of her mother and by realities of slavery from her father. Harriet is lucky, however, in the fact that she has a grandmother who has unique freedoms to spend time with her grandchildren and an owner who has taught her...