Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad

Written by Betty DeRamus

Narrated by Michael Early, Yusef Miller, Bernadette Drayton and 3 more

A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Betty DeRamus is an award-winning journalist who rummaged through musty records and forgotten memoirs to resurrect this book's unsung heroes. Despite the risks, some American slaves partook of the "forbidden fruit" of marriage. And when the dreaded separation inevitably occurred, slave spouses grieved deeply and sometimes made Herculean efforts to re-unite. DeRamus recounts the tales of soulmates who braved bloodhounds, bounty hunters, and bullets to preserve their vows of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 27, 2008
• ISBN: 9781436142717

Betty DeRamus

A veteran and award-winning journalist, Betty DeRamus was the jury's pick and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. She has been awarded a Michigan Press Association Award, as well as a Deems Taylor award for a profile of Roberta Flack published in Essence. DeRamus was one of an international group of select journalists who toured Central African refugee camps under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and one of a small group of journalists outside Verster prison in 1990 when Nelson Mandela finally left his cell. She has written about African American history for Essence, LIFE, North Star Journal, and Black World. She is a former commentator for The Detroit News, The Detroit Free Press, The Michigan Chronicle, and the British Broadcasting Company.

Reviews for Forbidden Fruit

[lmcalister_7 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting topic, unfortunately the author is not a very good writer. I hate when writers had way too much description to fill up the page. Wondering if these were originally articles published elsewhere since there is some repetition of material and also that would explain the wordiness. There is limited factual information so the author relied on excessive descriptions to fill the book instead of trying to fill in the gaps with a "fictionalized" accounting. She also often drifted off course to discuss the histories of other people involved in each story she was trying to tell