Ruby Sisson Library

"Drunken Bride, Texas, April 1875. Writing furiously in a jail cell in the days leading up to his hanging, former slave Persimmon "Persy" Wilson's last wish is to set the record straight. He may be guilty, but not of what he stands accused: the kidnapping and rape of his master's wife. Fifteen years earlier, Persy had been sold to Sweetmore, a Louisiana sugar plantation, alongside a striking young house slave named Chloe. Persy and Chloe arrive bound...

Set in 1885 in an Old West culture of bad whiskey, low morals and high adventure, the story follows four men on a collision course with a destiny they neither expect nor welcome. Ex-slave Honey Boutrille runs a New Orleans bordello called the House of Rest for Weary Boatmen. When he kills a white man for mutilating one of his girls, Honey must flee west to escape the hangman. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, former Civil War bushwhacker Twice Emerson,...

"Over the twenty-four years she was enslaved on the Montgomery Plantation, Louella learned to feel one thing: hate. Hate for the man who sold her mother. Hate for the overseer who left her daddy to hang from a noose. Hate so powerful there's no room in her heart for love, not even for the honorable Reverend William, whom she likes and respects enough to marry. But when William finally listens to Louella's pleas and leads the formerly enslaved people...

"A brilliant synthesis of African and African-American history that shows how slavery differed in different regions of the country, and how the Africans and their descendants influenced the culture, commerce, and laws of the early United States"--

"Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a life of her own, and a future for her family. When she moves to Edenton, North Carolina, from the plantation where she was born, she is free, newly married, and ready to follow her dreams. As the demands of life pull Josephine's attention--deepening her marriage, mothering her daughters, supporting her grandmother--she struggles to balance her real estate aspirations with the realities of keeping life going...

Banished by her grandfather at the age of eighteen, Spring Lee has survived scandal to claim her own little slice of Paradise, Wyoming. She's proud of working her ranch alone and unwilling to share it with a stranger - especially one like Garrett McCray, who makes her second-guess her resolve to avoid men. Garrett escaped slavery years ago and is now a reporter in Washington. He's traveled west to interview Dr. Colton Lee for an article, yet it's...

"The untold saga of John Randolph's 383 slaves, freed in his much-contested will of 1821, finally comes to light. Few legal cases in American history are as riveting as the controversy surrounding the will of Virginia Senator John Randolph (1773-1833), which-almost inexplicably-freed all 383 of his slaves in one of the largest and most publicized manumissions in American history. So famous is the case that Ta-Nehisi Coates has used it to condemn Randolph's...