The Freedom Thief

By Mikki Sadil

Shortly before the Civil War exploded in the South, thirteen year-old Ben McKenna is fighting his own war against slavery. Determined that his father not sell his slave friend, Josiah, Ben plans an escape for Josiah and his parents into an unknown world of hostility, danger, and deception. Unless Ben can pull this off, his father will sell the crippled Josiah, punish Josiah’s parents, and possibly imprison his own son.

The quest for freedom begins with a collapsing underground tunnel that nearly buries them alive, and continues through a dangerous swamp that sucks Josiah beneath its dirty waters. Impenetrable forests, deceptive “rescuers” who imprison them for weeks, and even the near capture by Union soldiers are only a few of the events that happen to prevent them from finding the Ohio River and freedom.

For months, Ben and his friends endure the hardships of hiding in barns, attic rooms, cellars full of stinking fruit and vegetables, and even secret travel from one safe house to another in false wagon bottoms and coffins in a death coach. Free blacks, Quakers, and a strange young man offer their help to the runaways, sometimes with questionable results.

Throughout this journey, Ben has struggled with his feelings about betraying his family and their beliefs in the convention of slavery in order to do what he believes is right.

When he and the slaves reach the Ohio River and the man who will take them to freedom, Ben must choose between crossing the river with his friends, leaving behind his family and all he has ever known, or returning home to face the consequences of his actions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
• Release date: Nov 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781771274418

Mikki Sadil

Mikki Sadil, wife, mother, grandmother, artist, horse trainer, and author of four books and more than thirty short stories and non-fiction articles, all for kids from ten to sixteen has had a passion for writing since she was ten years old and had her first set of poems published, and that passion has continued her whole life.Mikki lives in a small Victorian town on the beautiful Central Coast of California. She and her husband share their home with an incredibly handsome and intelligent Corgi, Dylan, a lazy Siamese/Himalayan cat, Beaujangles, and their mixed-up little cockatiel, Riley, who can’t decide who in this household is boss...but, as Mikki says, "of course, I am!"To find out more about Mikki's books, click this link to go directly to her blog: http://mikki-wordpainter.blogspot.com/