Love's Escape

By Carrie Fancett Pagels

Description:

The son of a funeral home owner and his friend, a sea captain, transport the women they love, two enslaved women from Virginia plantations, North.
Blurb: Letitia, a light-skinned house slave of the prominent Burwell family, learns that her father is the master of the plantation. As she helps them dress and fetches tea for the Burwell women, including her half-sister by blood, Lettie becomes more determined that she’ll not live out her days in servitude. But she's afraid of what could happen. When her mother dies from a beating that Burwell sanctioned, Lettie seeks any means of escape.

Nathan Pleasant, a bookkeeper and son of a well-respected Richmond funeral home owner, is smitten with the Burwells' slave. He meets secretly with Letitia. Nathan begins transporting slaves from Virginia and onto the Underground railroad. His dear friend, a ship captain, has also lost his heart to an enslaved woman. When the women's lives are at stake, the two men risk all by transporting them North. Can they get them to freedom? Who is pursuing them? Once they can shake their shackles of slavery, would the two women even welcome romance with their Underground Railroad conductors? Or will the two men find themselves alone and far from the James River, where they grew up and where their families still live?

Book Takeaway:

Love is a gift from God and can be shared with others but requires trust.

Why the author wrote this book:

This novella was originally published in Barbour's Captive Brides collection and has been expanded. I was brought up on stories about the Underground Railroad and the Abolitionist movement and am glad I could contribute my own story to this subgenre.