Freeman

Set in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Sam--a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army--decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to return to the war-torn South.

In the months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Sam--a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army--sets out on foot to return to the war-torn South. He is compelled to find his wife, whom he and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the farm to which they all "belonged." At the same time, Sam's wife, Tilda, is forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner from the charred remains of the Mississippi farm into Arkansas. In search of a place that will still respect his entitlements as slave-owner and Confederate officer. Meanwhile, Prudence, a headstrong white woman of means leaves her Boston home for Buford, Mississippi, to start a school for former bondsmen, and honor her father's dying wish. Freeman is a love story, sweeping, generous, brutal and compassionate. Few novels so powerfully capture the pathos and possibility of black slaves grappling with the promise and terror of their new status as free men and women.