Ashes

The concluding volume of Anderson’s Seeds of America Trilogy finds slaves Isabel and Curzon on the run as the War for Independence draws to a close. They were adolescents when the war began in Chains (BCCB 11/08), and now as young adults they face not only the trials of war and desperate strategies to secure their personal freedom but also their feelings for each other as they try to envision an adult future. Curzon has agreed to stay with Isabel until she locates her younger sister, Ruth. The anticipated reunion, however, doesn’t bring the joy Isabel hoped for: Ruth wants nothing to do with…

Co-protagonists Isabel and Curzon (Chains, 2008, and Forge, 2010) return in this long-awaited third and final volume in Anderson’s award-winning Seeds of America trilogy. The year is now 1781 and two teenage fugitives are 12 miles from Charleston, South Carolina, in search of Isabel’s younger sister Ruth, stolen away from her many years before. To Isabel’s great joy, find her they do but, inexplicably, Ruth refuses to return Isabel’s affection, remaining cold and distant even when the three, along with farm boy Eben, set off to walk to Rhode Island and freedom. Will they reach their…

It’s been five long years since Isabel’s younger sister, Ruth, was stolen away by hated slave owner Madam Lockton (Chains, rev. 11/08), but as Isabel continues her fraught journey south in June 1781 with her companion, Curzon, she remains as determined as ever to find and rescue her sister. On a semi-abandoned South Carolina plantation, they do find Ruth, but she has made a home there and is aloof and even hostile to Isabel. This attitude, coupled with Ruth’s slight mental impairment, makes their continuing escape (as Isabel, Curzon, and Ruth flee the plantation when the white overseer…

The final book in the trilogy finds escaped slaves Isabel and Curzon three years into their grueling search for Isabel’s little sister Ruth and deeply divided in their beliefs of who is fighting for their freedom: the Patriots or the British. In 1781, the American Revolution rages on. When Isabel and Curzon discover 12-year-old Ruth on a plantation near Charleston, SC, they rejoice; agree to bring Ruth’s friend, Aberdeen, with them; and quickly begin their secretive return journey north. After struggling to survive in the wilderness, the runaways are emboldened to separate and blend into the…

Picking up in June 1781, three years after Forge (2010), this thrilling conclusion to Anderson’s Seeds of America trilogy finds former slaves Isobel and Curzon finally locating Isobel’s younger sister, Ruth, on a South Carolina plantation. The reunion is not a happy one: while Ruth, now 12, has been cared for by fellow slaves on the plantation, she rebuffs Isobel. Curzon and Isobel are also at odds over his desire to enlist in the fight for independence. Despite the discord, the three head north—joined by Aberdeen, an escaped slave from the plantation—stopping in Williamsburg, Va., where…

The Seeds of America trilogy concludes at the Battle of Yorktown as Isabel and Curzon, along with the emerging new nation, grapple with the meaning of liberty. Isabel's journey in the first two novels took her from New York City in 1776 to Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778; now she's gone to Yorktown in 1781, in search of her younger sister, Ruth, who had been separated from her and sent south from New York City. Curzon and Isabel have known each other since trilogy opener Chains (2008), when Isabel saved him from certain death in a British prison, and they have experienced much…