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Mar 13, 2014GLNovak rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Widower Daniel Dickinson is cast out of his Quaker community with his new fifteen-year-old orphan bride, his five children children, his two horses and all his worldly goods to venture to Virginia. It is 1798, he is an abolitionist and Virginia is a slave state. Inexplicably and surprising to himself, he bids on and buys a young boy. The resulting story is one of how he and his family cope with their new life and the fact of slavery. I was totally engaged for the first half of so of the book, but began to bog down towards the end as the tone became darker and darker, and the characters more and more desperate. Maybe the author was paralleling the worsening plight of the slaves or of the country or of the friction in society. By the end I was done and didn't want to know anything more about the characters. Daniel was a sad man, his wife Ruth a bitter woman, and his children all in search of some peace and happiness. Was it the loss of his first wife? the loss of their Quaker community? the purchase of Onesimus? the times in general? All of the above?