Other elements emerged from my research to thicken the story – quilts, bonnets, farms, woods and corn – but the core of The Last Runaway centers on searching for freedom. Oberlin and Quakers came together in my mind then, a spark ignited, and I knew I would write about it. While sitting in silence, I began thinking about how Quakers were opposed to slavery and many had been abolitionists and worked on the Underground Railroad. In New York Times bestselling author Tracy Chevalier’s newest historical saga, she. 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.Ī couple of days later I went to a Quaker meeting. New York Times bestselling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier makes her first fictional foray into the American past in The Last Runaway, bringing to life the Underground Railroad and illuminating the principles, passions and realities that fueled this extraordinary freedom movement. I was lucky enough to see the novelist and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison there, dedicating a Bench by the Road to mark Oberlin as a significant place in African American history. 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. In April 2009 I was visiting Oberlin College in Ohio, where I got my degree back in 1984.
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