In the squalid slave quarters of a Tidewater plantation in Maryland, Harriet Tubman was born. She was a quiet girl, but a bright one, and her parents hoped that she might learn a trade so that she would not have to work in the fields. It was the most she could hope for, they said.

But Harriet had a dream for a better life for her people. She heard the whisperings of slave revolts, escapes from other plantations, the underground railroad. She acquired amazing physical strength and moral courage; she learned to recognize the signs in nature that would enable her to escape. And escape she did.

But freedom was not enough. After she escaped she went back for others. She walked, ran, hid, coaxed, cajoled, and prayed, until three hundred of her people had been delivered into freedom. She became the legendary "Moses" whom every plantation owner feared, and none had ever seen. But all her life she remained the tender, understanding Tidewater girl she was born.

Ann Petry brings all her controlled narrative skills to bear on the heroic story of a great woman. In vivid flowing style, she makes Harriet Tubman into a living figure and recreates in vivid scenes an era of struggle, hardship, and unshakable faith.

"It is an amazing story, and Ann Petry has told it convincingly. Her technique of ending each chapter with one or two italicized paragraphs, highlighting some contemporary event in the conflict over slavery, serves to keep Harriet's story in focus with those unhappy time." —New York Herald Tribune. 

From the dust jacket