The Mapmaker's Children
By Sarah McCoy
Via Netgalley ARC Thank you to the Publishers Crown and Sarah
McCoy for a copy of the book for exchange of an honest review.
Synopsis:
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.
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.
My Review:
Sarah McCoy
writes a story that intersects the lives of two women past and present. I love
when a book is placed in the perspective of the person; it transports you to
their time and place. Sarah writes with emotions than run deep in her
characters, when they felt you feel that same emotion.
The book
takes place in 1859, Virginia, when Sarah Brown helps her father, John Brown,
Abolitionist in the help with the Underground Railroad in her art by drawing
maps to aid slaves to freedom. When her father is convicted and hung for
treason. She carries on with the secret mission of the Underground Railroad.
Sarah is an amazing woman; I could not imagine living in those times. McCoy
writes her with a tough outside with a heart of gold in the center.
Eden was a
harder character to reach, I felt very connected with her. There are so many
emotions that arise when conception is a problem in a marriage and
relationship. I really wanted Eden to feel powerful to the struggle she was
going through. When a young girl comes into her life in an unexpected way, Eden
learns she needs to make decisions of her own.
This book
brought a part of history that many people tend brush aside, up front and
center. McCoy delivers the power of what is truly inside a strong woman past
and present.
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