Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

In 1860 Louisiana, eighty-year-old Madame Sylvie decides to sit for a portrait, as horrific stories that span generations from the big house and the fields are revealed.

Elsie, now twenty-one years old, wishes to marry an old friend but her father decrees she must first learn to manage her inheritance, including her mother's Louisiana sugar plantation and its slaves.

A new novel inspired by little-known historical events: a dramatic story of three young women on a journey in search of family amidst the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who rediscovers their story and its vital connection to her own students' lives. Actual "Lost Friends" advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold...

"Let us descend,' the poet now began, 'and enter this blind world.'" --Inferno, Dante Alighieri Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver...

Nore arrives at her stepmother's Louisiana plantation to find her new family odd and an aura of evil and mystery about the place.

Amantha Starr, born and raised by a loving father on a plantation in pre-Civil War Kentucky, embarks on a lifelong search for answers about her tangled past when she learns, upon her father's death, that her mother was a slave and that she, too, is about to be sold into servitude.

After her father's mysterious death, Vivian Patin decides to restore the family's recent inheritance, a plantation named Rosebank, into a resort hotel, but murder and mystery abound.

Based on the true story of Solomon Northup. It is 1841, and Northup, an accomplished, free citizen of New York, is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Stripped of his identity and deprived of all dignity, Northup is ultimately purchased by ruthless plantation owner Edwin Epps and must find the strength within to survive. Filled with powerful performances by an astonishing cast, 12 Years a Slave is both an unflinching account of slavery in American history...

This is the story of Moinette, daughter of an African mother and a white father she never knew. While her mother cares for the plantation linens, Moinette tends to the master's daughter, which allows her to eavesdrop on lessons. She also learns that she is property, and at fourteen she is sold, separated from her mother without a chance to say goodbye. Heartbroken and terrified, and with a full understandiing of what she will risk, Moinette begins...

As the country continues to change and shift, everyone must decide if they will continue to walk toward the freedom they long for. As the country changes and shifts, everyone is challenged to do what it takes to walk toward freedom. Carrie and Janie battle fear and worry as Anthony and Matthew deal with the horror of a brutal massacre in Colfax, Louisiana. Moses takes Felicia and Frances to San Francisco, where Felicia makes a decision that will...