Father By Blood
Buy the Book:Amazon
Google Books
Published by: New England Press
Release Date: January 1, 1999
ISBN13: 978-1881535331
Synopsis
Annie Brown loves her father, John Brown, but it is not easy. His crusade against slavery is more than a cause—it is an obsession that consumes him. Haunted by frightening visions that foretell disaster, Annie learns about her father’s latest plan: an attack on a government armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. How can she overcome John Brown’s iron will and convince his loyal followers that he is leading them into disaster?
Praise
Winner of the 1998 Silver Bay Children’s Literature Award
Father By Blood is a wonderful book that takes readers beyond the cold facts about John Brown’s life and into the heart of his daughter, Annie. In a style that is both realistic and at times poetic, Louella Bryant helps the reader see Brown through Annie’s eyes and feel the contradiction she feels about his use of violence to end the violence of slavery.
–Clinton Cox, author of Fiery Vision: The Life and Death of John Brown
"This is historical fiction at its best, a moving, absorbing and balanced account of the events leading up to John Brown’s famous raid on Harpers Ferry. Louella Bryant has filled her book with the sights and sounds and even the smells of rural America in the 1850s while at the same time giving her readers a clear understanding of the abolitionist movement."
–Julian Thompson, author of The Grounding of Group 6
Excerpt
I stopped thinning carrots and pressed the sleeve of my shirt to my sweating forehead. The air was cool this cloudless day, but with the bright sun and hard work, I felt hot. I had three more rows to thin before noon, but I was taking my time about it. If Father had been home, he would have pressed me to be finished by now and on to another chore.
My father was a farmer, not much different from any other farmer in North Elba. He raised sheep and kept a milking cow and a pair of oxen for pulling the plow. He went to church on Sunday. Once in a while he was called on to preach because his voice boomed from the pulpit and he could keep the gentlemen from falling asleep. On those Sundays he always spoke out against enslavement. Most northern farmers were opposed to slavery, and a few called themselves abolitionists, but I didn’t know any fathers who were as adamantly against slave holding as mine.
