Orem Library

"In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother,...

Letitia holds nothing more dear than the papers that prove she is no longer a slave. Nancy Hawkins is loathe to leave her settled life for the treacherous journey by wagon train, but she will follow her husband anywhere. Betsy is a Kalapuya Indian, the last remnant of a once proud tribe in the Willamette Valley in Oregon territory. As season turns to season, suspicion turns to friendship, and fear turns to courage, three spirited women will discover...

Army attorney Captain Merritt Barber believes that the charges brought against Lt. Flipper are nothing but a conspiracy on the part of a small group of officers whose purpose is to remove from their midst the only black officer in the U.S. Army.

Nineteen-year-old Lance Barlow joined the Border Ruffians, a Missouri militia, for adventure, but now he finds himself rebelling against the wanton murder and destruction being committed. Then he is reunited with his friend Shadrack, a freed slave. Later as pony express rider, Lance loses track of Shadrack again until he hears that he's been forced back into slavery by a notorious slave dealer. Lance makes it his mission to rescue Shadrack and in...

Will Brite is a Slash Five cowboy working in the Middle Concho region of Texas in the winter of 1884 when a blizzard descends upon him -- the likes of which he has never seen. Trapped under his horse and entangled in a barbed wire fence, Will finds an unexpected (and unwelcome) savior in the form of Zeke Boles, a former slave on the run from a bloody, guilt-filled past. In Zeke's dark features Will sees a reflection of the haunting memories he has...

Young and recently widowed, Jasmine Houston confronts the vital issues of freedom and slavery, love and hate, life and death. As Jasmine's opposition to slavery grows and her friendship with her bachelor brother-in-law Nolan deepens, her Massachusetts horse farm soon becomes a stop for the Underground Railroad. With both her mother and mammy dying, she and her young son rush to the family plantation in Mississippi--escorted by Nolan. Keeping a death-bed...

Even though it is now 1901, the people of Buxton, Canada (originally a settlement of runaway slaves) and Chatham, Canada are still haunted by two events of half a century before--the American Civil War, and the Irish potato famine, and the lasting damage those events caused to the survivors.

One of a handful of lawyers in the new state of Oregon, recently widowed Matthew Penny agrees to help Worthy Brown, a newly freed slave, rescue his fifteen year old daughter, Roxanne, from their former master, a powerful Portland lawyer. Worthy's lawsuit sets in motion events that lead to Worthy's arrest for murder and create an agonizing moral dilemma that could send either Worthy or Matthew to the hangman.

Zulu Heart returns to the 19th Century of Steven Barnes's justly acclaimed novel Lion's Blood, a brilliant alternate history in which black Africans have colonized the New World with white Europeans as their slaves. As Zulu Heart opens, New World nobleman Kai ibn Jallaleddin is a senator of New Djibouti, an envied plantation owner, and a loving family man. His ex-slave and friend, the Irishman Aidan O'Dere, is on the Ouachita frontier, helping other...

Twelve-year-old Patsy keeps a diary of the ripe but confusing time following the end of the Civil War and the granting of freedom to former slaves.