Honor Bright is a modest English Quaker with a broken heart. Emigrating to Ohio with her sister in the hope of making a new life, she soon discovers that 19th-century America is a hard, precarious place to live. Its people are practical and unsentimental, its climate challenging. Even its quilts are different from those she makes. Moreover, it is divided by slavery, legal in southern states and opposed by many northerners.
One day a runaway slave appears in the farmyard of Honor’s new family, and she must decide what to do. Even Quakers — famed for championing human equality — may hesitate to break the laws of the land. Drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network of people helping runaways escape to freedom, Honor befriends two surprising women who demonstrate what defiance can achieve. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes in, whatever the personal costs.
Inspiration
In April 2
009 I was visiting my alma mater Oberlin College in Ohio. Since its founding in the 1830s it has been a progressive place — one of the first colleges in the USA to admit both African Americans and women. I was lucky enough to see the novelist and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison there, dedicating a monument marking Oberlin as a significant place in African American history. Oberlin was an important stop on the Underground Railroad — a 19th-century network of people helping runaway slaves escape from the South to the relative safety of the North.
A few days later I attended a Quaker meeting. While sitting in silence, I began thinking about how Quakers were opposed to slavery and many had worked on the Underground Railroad. Oberlin and Quakers came together in my mind, a spark ignited, and I knew I would write about it. Other elements emerged from my research to thicken the story — especially quilts — but the core of The Last Runaway centers on searching for freedom.
Reviews
Emotionally riveting...Portrays a pre-Civil War America full of contradictions, personified by a heroine facing the kinds of major moral challenges in her life that are playing out on a grand scale in her adopted country. —O Magazine
Chevalier has woven a rich tapestry here, setting her protagonist at the crossroads of a time explosive with issues surrounding slavery, rapidly changing industry, America's pioneering spirit and its racial divide. —Independent on Sunday
With compelling characters and swift pacing, The Last Runaway adds a worthy new chapter to a story that has consumed generations. —USA Today
A fast-paced, satisfying read, with Chevalier continually adding riveting details to keep the narrative rolling...Thorough research appears to be the hallmark of her work, lending it greater credibility and depth. —Toronto Globe and Mail
Chevalier places her heroine at the heart of all this, constructing a synergy between character and plot that makes this novel exquisitely complete. Her narrative framework is as tight and as well thought-out as one of the Quaker quilts that Honor works on. —Times (London)
Beautifully written and offers much for the reader to savor. — NPR
Chevalier’s thought-provoking, lyrical novel doesn’t allow any of her characters an easy way out. —Publisher’s Weekly
