The Mapmaker's Children
The Mapmaker's Children by Sarah McCoy
Hardcover, 320 pages
Published May 5th 2015 by Crown
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.
Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground
Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.
Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.
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My thoughts about The Mapmaker's Children ~~
I have always been interested in the Civil War era, think Gone with the Wind, one of my favorites. This wonderful book weaves the personal story of Sarah, the mapmaker and what her life was like, with a modern day woman, Eden, who discovers a connection to Sarah and that time period.
The Mapmaker's Children gives an amazing history lesson without being a 'boring' history lesson. This author has done her research about the John Brown family, the Underground Railroad, and the maps and dolls that were used to give messages to the freed slaves traveling north. And then she creates a very enjoyable story about the people and the times.
The story jumps back and forth between Sarah's time period and the present time, as Eden discovers the connection between the doll head she finds in her cellar and those who live around her. She also discovers so much more; all that has been missing in her own life.
This story drew me in and I devoured it very quickly. It is beautiful written and made this piece of history come alive for me. I love Sarah's writing and I'll be checking out her other book, The Baker's Daughter.
About the author
Her work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post and other publications. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband, an Army physician, and their dog, Gilly, in El Paso, Texas.
Sarah enjoys connecting with her readers on Twitter at @SarahMMcCoy, on her Facebook Fan Page or via her website, www.sarahmccoy.com.
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I love learning about history though novels like this, when the facts are carefully woven into an amazing story.
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This book really interests me. I know I have to read it this summer!
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