Mose in Bondage
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
The scene was nothing like New Orleans but strangely seemed to beckon her. Alone on the starboard deck just as the sun was setting, she heard voices in concert calling, calling: Come now to this better place, dear Pearl! Come now, dear Pearl! Come now! For a moment she admired the colors in the western sky and their reflection in the water, and she knew again the happiness of hard, tense, uncompromising insanity. Bright of face and smiling, she hoisted her skirts, climbed over the rail, and jumped. For an instant she seemed to be floating like a leaf into a rainbow. Then the hollow air opened for her, and she was falling so fast she couldn’t breathe. Suddenly something hard as concrete slapped her fragile body and set off thunderbolts in her head. No longer feeling pain, she plunged downward, downward into the dark water. It flushed her face, cooled her fevered senses, washed away all the intensity that had kept her going for so long, and brought her peace.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
In the autumn of 1850 the man called Mose, a fixture on the Horton plantation in North Carolina, is sold to a wily slave trader to settle a debt. Traveling southward, he sinks into cruel bondage while a woman sold by Horton at the same time runs northward to freedom. In Savannah Mose becomes the property of a kind master, but in Alabama under the thumb of Cody Hawk he suffers intensely. With some help from a slave named Pearl, he shakes off the deadly grip of a dark force, experiences a kind of rebirth, and gains the strength to escape the hell created by Hawk. Saving himself, he is not able to save Pearl.
About the Author
After a stint in the Air Force and graduate work at Baylor and UCLA, James Haydock earned a Ph.D. in Victorian studies at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Later he taught English and American literature in university classes, specializing in the Victorians. His publications include critical and biographical works in his field and several historical novels. Now retired, he lives with his wife in Wisconsin.