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voisjoe1
Jun 17, 2014voisjoe1 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This was a complex novel, as it bridges the years when slave-holding was legal in America to the decade after the outlawing of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment. We meet slaves, slave-holders, people helping slaves cross the Ohio River into free-state Ohio, bounty hunters pursuing slaves in free-state Ohio, and also former slaves, years after the granting of their freedom. The novel bounces back-and-forth across the border and also across time, so the reader has the task of trying to keep track of why the author sequences the events as she does. But this is her masterpiece and she is a Nobel Prize winner and she is at the top of her game in this work. Readers still argue today, was infanticide the best option for one of the protagonists of the novel?