The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy– 320 pages
Book Blurb:
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril. Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance. Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.
My Review: 4.5 stars
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The Mapmaker’s Children is a fabulous summer read and/or book club choice, written by Sarah McCoy of The Baker’s Daughter. McCoy does an excellent job with the alternating plot lines that are separated by over 150 years and then weaving them together seamlessly.
Eden, living in current times, is hardened due to her inability to have children. Learning to love all those around her and most especially herself, is powerful to the story. Finding the “Chuckie” doll becomes the impetus for the storylines to come together. Sarah, living in the mid 1800s, is also unable to have children, however she uses that “burden” as momentum to fight slavery and work for the Underground Railroad. These are two wonderful characters, so different yet incredibly so similar.
I was anxious to find out more about Sarah Brown, the little known yet brave daughter of the infamous John Brown and his attachment to Harpers Ferry. Any book that encourages to me brush up on my history is always a winner for me; this one included. I had forgotten until I read this that Brown’s failed attack on Harpers Ferry most likely hastened the start of the Civil War.
As did Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, this book is an easy to read story with a huge dollop of fact plus fiction, which encourages us to learn more about the savagery of slavery and the promise and hope of good people willing to fight it.
Quotes I liked:
You are my son. You don’t know the first thing about real love until you have children of your own.
– “The collective public voice did not always represent the individual heart.”
– “Her father had proven to them all: when a beating heart stopped, there was no black or white, only blood red. The flesh was equal. It was the character of a man that made him better or worse.”
_ “Unlike other items, a home wasn’t something you could bring to someone; they had to come to it.”
– “What fable and history could agree upon was that everybody was searching for their ever-after, whatever that may be.”
– “Fear was a deceptive lover, and she was tired of sharing her bed with it.”
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