Stealing Freedom Book

Stealing Freedom by Elisa Carbon is a great book! First published in 1998 it's about 258 pages long and intended for anyone to read! Although the book might be written for more young adults, anyone could read and enjoy this book. Stealing Freedom takes place around the mid 1800's down in Maryland. Ann Maria Weems and her family are black slaves living in Maryland that serve Master Charles. Master Charles is a white man who is rather ill tempered and not very patient.
This book begins with Ann and her family working on Master Charles farm and inn. They work hard everyday and live their lives normally. Everything was fine, other than the fact that they were slaves, until Master Charles demands the help of her three brothers and another slave. They go down to another city to sell the farm's produce and to their families dismay, Master Charles and the other slave return with the news that Ann's brothers have been sold off down into Alabama somewhere. This is extremely disheartening to Ann and her family, but it only gets worse when a white man comes to help them by buying their freedom. Master Charles agrees to sell the family off, that is, everyone except for Ann. With that, Ann is left all alone to do all the chores on the farm and at the inn day after day. Fortunately, she finds a friend in another black boy, Alfred, at that makes the days go by a little bit quicker for her. Suddenly, Ann finds herself in escape along the Underground Railroad in her search for freedom. After a long journey and after she passes through the homes of many kind people who try to help her, she finally makes it to Canada where she is free. She lives with her aunt and uncle until she is able to reunite with her family, all of which are now free. She also happens to reunite again with Alfred, who is also free, and they get married and have a great life together.
I liked this book for many different reasons, and I really can't think of anything I didn't like about it. I loved how it had some excitement in it, and also how you could really feel the characters, mostly Ann's, emotions. This was a great book and there are a lot of times in the book when you wouldn't want to put it down! There are a couple of quotes in this book that really illustrate these things. The first is on page 78, "But Ann already felt it. The fabric of her family had been ripped again, and she was the piece that was being torn off. Another quote is ""Calle your dogs off," Reverend Freeman held up his hands to protect his face. "Call them off I say!" "I think we have something here," one of the men said, grinning." This quote was found on page 225. These exemplefied the excitement in the story, as well as the emotion.
One of the themes found in this book is that no matter how hard life gets at times, always keep your head up and do your best, and things will get better. Ann exemplified this theme throughout the whole story, and it does proved to be true, in many different aspects of life. This book was also unique in it's own way. I think it was mostly unique because it was based on a true story. The author actually followed their lives closely in this story and actually used some of the actual quotes from Ann's journals and other records. I thought these things made it a really good, yet unique in its own way. I would recommend this book to my good friend, Allison Garner. She is a big reader and I think that this is a book that she would thoroughly enjoy. This is however a great book and I really would recommend it to anyone!