BY FREEDOM'S LIGHT by Elizabeth O'Maley




Published in 2009 by Indiana Historical Society Press.

Set in Eastern Indiana in 1842, By Freedom's Light is a short that novel does a great job of talking about slavery for a grades 4-6 audience.

The Caldwell family has recently moved to Indiana from North Carolina. They are Quakers. Nowadays, Quakers are famous for their anti-slavery stand and participation in the Underground Railroad in the 1800s. But, in reality, the Quakers are split in two groups. All are anti-slavery but some believe that you should not break the law by helping runaway slaves. Others believe that helping people in need trumps the law.

 The Caldwell family embodies this split. Sarah, age 13, is anti-abolitionist and is quite sure her father is as well. However, her new young stepmother is certainly an abolitionist. She is close with Levi and Catharine Coffin, two of the most famous members of the Underground Railroad network who live in Newport, Indiana (now called Fountain City) and Sarah witnesses her helping a runaway slave. Sarah is sure that her father is anti-abolitionist and throughout the book seeks an opportunity to discuss her stepmother's abolitionist ways with him.

In the middle of this family dynamic comes Sarah's sister, Rachel, with her husband and newborn baby. They bring along the baby's nursemaid, a teenage slave named Polly.
The Levi Coffin House. Nowadays it is a museum and
a historic site.
As Sarah and Polly come to know one another they also become friends. Sarah's theoretical views on slavery crash into the reality that her friend is a slave and does not control her own life. Her mother-in-law's comment strikes home when she notes, "I don't doubt Rachel and George treat her kindly...but kindness is no substitute for freedom." (p. 70)

 What I like about this book is that teaches without being preachy. My daughter's fourth grade teacher used this book in her Indiana history class this year and I can certainly see why. You can move into the topic of slavery from a non-traditional starting point (which you would have to do in Indiana since it was a free state) and easily talk about larger issues like what do you do if doing the right thing is illegal?

 The text of the book is 172 pages, including pictures and maps. In addition, the book also has a glossary and a bibliography.

 I rate this novel 5 stars out of 5 stars.

 This book can be found on Amazon.com here: By Freedom's Light.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

ABRAHAM LINCOLN by James Daugherty

Image
Originally Published in 1943. The edition I read was a re-print published by Scholastic in 1966. While not a terribly deep dive into Lincoln, Daugherty's (1889-1974) very readable small telling of his life has some of the most poetic prose I have ever read in a biography.  There are a couple of factual errors in the book. One example that I noted is the assertion that Robert E. Lee replaced a wounded James Longstreet at the head of what became known as the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862. It was Joseph E. Johnston. That bears very little bearing on the story of Lincoln, even though I am sure he would rather Johnston would have been in the fighting rather than Longstreet.  Here is an example of Daugherty's excellent prose (concerning Lincoln's early days as a lawyer):  For the long, bony, sad man who was Billy's partner, the law office became a sanctuary and a refuge and a workshop, where through the years he slowly grew and learned and thought out the dark meanings an...
Read more

LIVE LONG and...WHAT I LEARNED ALONG the WAY (audiobook) by William Shatner and David Fisher

Image
Published by Macmillan Audion in 2018. Read by the author, William Shatner. Duration: 5 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged William Shatner gets personal in this look back at his life. He offers advice, although to be fair you have to know his first piece of advice - don't take his advice. Why not? Because his life is his life and you are you and the situations are different. That being said, he does offer one really good piece of advice - say "yes" to new opportunities. Besides the advice, he fills the book with stories of his life and discussions of situations he faced and how he dealt with them. He is brutally honest about his childhood and his lifelong inability to make real friends. Leonard Nimoy was one of his few friends, but at the end of his life Nimoy had refused to talk with him for five years. The author, undoubtedly being overly dramatic - and also interesting. Sometimes he drifts into sort "old man" ramblings about life in general and repeats himself, bu...
Read more

KING RICHARD I: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY of AMERICA'S GREATEST AUTO RACER by Richard Petty with William Neely

Image
Originally published in 1986. Richard Petty is NASCAR's winningest driver, with 200 wins. He raced from 1958-1992. He won seven championships, he won the Daytona 500 7 times and is one of the few drivers to win at every track he competed on during the course of his career. In 1967 he won 10 races in a row (!) on his way to winning 27 races for the season.  He also won the very first NASCAR big time car race I ever saw at Michigan in 1981.  I was already a fan - and I was sure that he would win every race I attended from the point forward (he didn't). The Petty family raced in stock car races back when they really were stock cars - you could buy replacement parts at local dealers or in junkyards. They raced when you could drive the car to the track - but that was a bad idea if you were caught up in an accident and couldn't drive it back home. They got in on the ground floor of NASCAR, with Richard Petty's dad winning 3 of the early championships and Richard, his brother,...
Read more

THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES (The Great Courses) (audiobook) by Philip Daileader

Image
Published in 2013 by The Great Courses. Lectures delivered by the author, Philip Daileader. Duration: 12 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. The idea behind The Great Courses is that anybody can have access to high quality college instructors who are truly experts in their fields. In this course the focus is the Early Middle Ages (roughly 300 CE to 1000 CE).  Daileader starts with the start of the decline of the Roman Empire, somewhere around the year 300 CE. He looks at the trends of the late Roman Empire and how they led to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Rome, not Constantinople) and how those trends led to the political and economic systems that typify the time period we know as the Middle Ages. There is a heavy focus on what is now France, which is well-deserved since Charlemagne is one of the biggest historical figures of this era. But, other areas get a fair amount of attention, like Ireland, Spain, and the Islamic world. The sudden appearance of the Vikings contribute...
Read more

2 B R 0 2 B (audiobook) by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
Originally published in 1962 in  the magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction. Published in 2017 by Author's Republic. Read by Phil Chenevert Duration: 19 minutes. Unabridged. 2 B R 0 2 B is set in a future world where the population is kept at a strict limit so that the living can live in a clean and safe environment. When a new person is born into the world, someone must volunteer to leave because aging has pretty much been cured. The Federal Bureau of Termination keeps track of all of the births and deaths to be sure that the math works out. The phone number for the Federal Bureau of Termination is 2 B R 0 2 B - pronounced "two be or naught to be." The story is about a father whose wife is about to give birth to triplets. One of the grandparents of the triplets has agreed to die. Unless something changes, the future parents will have to pick out two babies to kill... This is an intentionally provocative short story that had a quick and brutal ending that surprised me.  ...
Read more

DEADWOOD: A HISTORY from the BEGINNNG to PRESENT (Old West) (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published in 2025 by Hourly History . There are a few towns whose names are synonymous with the Old West, such as Dodge City, Kansas and Tombstone, Arizona. Deadwood, South Dakota is one of those names. It keeps on coming up in novels and movies. It brings to mind smoke-filled bars with poker games, gold rushes, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok.  This was Deadwood's wild and turbulent beginning and this short e-book covers that well. But, it also covers the part that no one ever mentions - what does a small, out of the way city do when the gold rush is over and the saloons and casinos have moved on? To be honest, I hadn't really thought much about post-gold rush Old West cities. But, I have seen the same problem back in the Midwest where I live. Instead of gold mines that petered we had a manufacturing boom that has been in steady decline for 60 years. Factories close, the supporting businesses follow, and a dying town is left in their wake. What happened to Deadwood is not a...
Read more

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Image
A Few Thoughts on Uncle Tom's Cabin First Published in 1852. Harriet Beecher Stowe sat down to write a book that would show the United States the evils of slavery. She wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, at the urging of her sister-in-law. She succeeded in fueling the debate over slavery and she pointed a finger of shame at the slave owners and at America as a whole. Harriett Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) It created a national sensation. Within ten years, it sold two million copies, making it the best-selling novel of all time in the United States, in proportion to population, according to noted Civil War historian James M. McPherson. The book was so controversial and so powerful that there were attempts to ban it in some parts of the South. Pro-slavery authors attempted to counter the book with their own books with titles like Uncle Robin, in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom Without One in Boston in an attem...
Read more

SUPERMAN / WONDER WOMAN, Volume 1: Power Couple (graphic novel) by Charles Soule

Image
Published in 2014 by DC Comics. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Tony S. Daniel Synopsis In the New 52 reboot of the DC universes we have a world where Superman and Wonder Woman are secretly dating. They are working through their relationship, dealing with cultural differences, a massive age difference, and the fact that a lot of her Greek god family basically hates him because he is a commoner, despite his extraordinary powers. As part of larger plot to escape from the Phantom Zone, General Zod released Doomsday. Doomsday, you may remember, is the creature that killed Superman in the "Death of Superman" series back in 1992.  This is one of  the first appearances of Doomsday in the New 52 reboot and he is as fearsome as ever.  Meanwhile, Clark Kent's partner in an online publishing venture (Cat Grant) publishes an exclusive video that she received from an anonymous source. It shows Superman and Wonder Woman making out and suddenly they are the "it" couple around...
Read more

COMRADES in ARMS (kindle)(short story) by Kevin J. Anderson

Image
Published in 2014 by WordFire Press My Synopsis: Veteran (and prolific) author Kevin J. Anderson delivers a compelling short story/novella in the tradition of the golden age of sci-fi with Comrades in Arms .  Humanity is at war with an insectoid race that uses psychic energy to create weapons and even peer into the future.  The story is set in an asteroid belt way out in the middle of nowhere. Some of the asteroids have breathable atmospheres, but they're not comfortable for either race to live on for long.  Even though the asteroids have limited value, there is no way either side will give them up so the war has ground itself into a stalemate of sorts.  However, humanity has developed a new weapon that is starting to turn the tide. Mortally wounded humans are brought back to the base and given the Robocop treatment. Their bodies are refitted with armored limbs, organs are replaced, and a "werewolf trigger" is installed deep in the brain. The werewolf trigger sets th...
Read more

GHOSTED: AN AMERICAN STORY (audiobook) by Nancy French

Image
Published by Zondervan in April of 2024. Read by the author, Nancy French. Duration: 9 hours, 56 minutes. Unabridged. My synopsis: Ghosted is an autobiography of Nancy French. Nancy French had a career as a Conservative political columnist and ghost-writing for people in Conservative circles. She helped Conservative politicians write opinion pieces, helped them come up with clever lines for radio and TV interviews, and even books. She worked with such Conservative stars as Sarah Palin and Ben Sasse. She even worked with the Romney campaign.  The book starts with her childhood in Kentucky, including an awful story of sexual abuse at the hands of a manipulative youth pastor and how that sent her life into a spiral into she met her future husband while she was in college. Nancy French is married to David French, a well-known Conservative political columnist, commentator, and attorney. He worked for two organizations that defended the rights of Christian groups and Conservatives on co...
Read more