All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore – 368 pages
ARC from Ballantine Books and Netgalley for an honest review
Book Blurb:
Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives.
Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.
My Review: 4 stars
All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore was a historical dive into pre-Civil War Philadelphia and the friction between the abolitionists and pro-slavery folks.
The book features three women, living very different lives within blocks from one another. Nell, a black abolitionist. Charlotte, an escaped slave yet posing as a maid and Evie, a slave that is about to be sent far away with a lecherous master. As different as these women’s lives are, their missions become one goal: find a way for Evie to escape.
What I liked most about the book was learning the history that took place. I was surprised to realize that the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society was in fact a real society. Their work was ahead of their time. Kudos to them. The side characters were also important to the story. The chef, especially, was a great minor character, as was Alex, a dedicated abolitionist.
There were parts of the novel that moved a bit slowly, but it didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the book. I was invested in the story and the character’s outcomes.
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