Life in free society is not easy. Her youngest, baby Bennie, is still in Virginia; still the master's property. Her master goes to court to get her back. Her experiences with the abolitionists are...interesting. Mercer does find work, friends and, in a sense, family.
Ms. Cary is a powerful writer. You can feel the pain and sorrow when Mercer thinks about Bennie; her joyousness with freedom; her fear about going back and her frustrations with white society. Knowing this was her only chance to grasp freedom and realizing she might never see her baby again make the decision to walk away a shatteringly courageous one. Mercer's speeches to abolitionists were compelling. In her first few speeches, she told her life story -- where she came from, her life as a slave. White society's horror/fascination with slavery repels her. "Did they beat you? How many times? Can we see the scars?" As she becomes more confident speaking in public, her speeches become more indicting of white Northern society's responsibility for slavery. By refusing to stand up as a group and end slavery, the North is a silent and deadly accomplice. Mercer's final speech could be lifted out of the novel and applied to today's headlines...Bosnia, Iraq, the United States.
Although this is fiction, a note in the Acknowledgments caught our attention: "...the story of Jane Johnson in William Still's 'The Underground Railroad' (1872)...". Did Jane Johnson also stand up and walk away from slavery, leaving a baby behind? Was she a defendant in court, trying to use Pennsylvania law to avoid going back to Virginia?
Lorene Cary writes extremely well -- we were hooked within the first two to three pages. We highly recommend it.