Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Review: By observing the lessons of the children he serves, Jonah, a slave in North Carolina, has taught himself to read and write. When this secret is discovered and he is accused of stealing the book he is reading, he is whipped, and runs away with a head full of maps and very little else. Along the way, he meets Angel, who decides they are meant to be together after a single drunken night. Somehow she is able to keep finding him as he journeys northward, despite his best efforts to lose her, and this is not the only part of the book that feels inevitable. Throughout all the Jonah's travails (and there are several), I never doubted that he would reach the North and freedom. This inevitability took the tension completely out of the story for me and made it hard for me to care much about what happened to Jonah either along the way or in the end.
FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.
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