The Last Runaway
Tracy Chevalier's latest novel is set in a Quaker settlement in Ohio in the mid-1850s
The latest novel by award-winning writer Tracy Chevalier is set in a Quaker settlement in Ohio in the mid-1850s. Tracy Chevalier grew up attending Quaker summer camps and her sister and stepmother joined the Religious Society of Friends. ‘I never did’, she explained in a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, ‘But I still go to Meetings occasionally – I crave the silence.’
Her second novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, won the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award and sold four million copies. It was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson.
In The Last Runaway Honor Bright, a young English Quaker, is drawn into the clandestine world of the Underground Railroad in the United States. The railroad was an informal network of people, a number of whom were Quakers, who helped runaway slaves escape to freedom in the north. A central theme in the novel is the moral dilemma faced by Honor Bright.
Although there was no slavery in Ohio, the Fugitive Slave Act punished any accomplice by exorbitant fines and confiscation of property.
