Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson's Flight from Slavery

Gr 7–10—This title is an in-depth historical narrative concerning several people involved in an attempted slave escape in 1848. The Pearl was to ferry 13-year-old Emily Edmonson and scores of other runaway slaves from Washington DC down the Potomac River and up the Chesapeake Bay. However, the ship was captured before reaching free soil. Conkling narrates the tumultuous stories of Edmonson, her family, and the others involved, tracing their lives from their ill-fated jail escape to the slave auctions, the Deep South, and finally to freedom. Readers will discover how Edmonson came into contact with important figures in the antislavery movement, including Frederick Douglass, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Primary documents give an authentic voice to the text, including excerpts from Frederick Douglass's autobiography. Nineteenth-century plates, illustrations, photographic portraits, and posters enhance the text. Historical photographs of slaves and slave pens are particularly moving. Maps clearly outline the geography relevant to the narratives, and frequent text blocks separate contextual information from the primary narrative. This work covers information about slavery that is often not found in other volumes, such as the Second Middle Passage—the transportation of slaves from the Upper South to the Lower South—and the uncomfortable reality of slaves as "second wives" to white men. Conkling's work is intricate and detailed, and some readers may be overwhelmed by the vast number of names encountered here. Nevertheless, this is a strong and well-sourced resource.—Jeffrey Meyer, Mount Pleasant Public Library, IA