TRUTH

A fictional account of the life of Sojourner Truth—abolitionist, feminist, preacher and former slave—sticks close to the facts while imagining the mostly appalling details of the activist’s early life.

Though Sojourner Truth narrated her own story (dictated to Olive Gilbert and published in 1850), more than half of her slim autobiography is taken up with her spiritual journey and the political activism of her later years. Differently, psychotherapist Sheehan’s debut imagines the details of Sojourn’s childhood and young womanhood—that is, her life in slavery. Born around 1797 to Mau Mau Bett and Bomefree, Isabella, though born in slavery and no stranger to work as a child, was fortunate to have been raised by both her parents and favored by her Dutch master. Her purchase by John Neely when she’d reached age nine was the beginning of her misery: he beat her, assaulted her sexually, refused to teach her his native English, and beat her again when she responded to him in Dutch. After a year of perpetual fear, Isabella was sold to a rowdy bunch of tavern-keepers, a Dutch family who treated her well. Soon after, she was sold to John Dumont, with whom she stayed until her freedom. Though Dumont favored Isabella (above all others in his household, it seems), his wife was unspeakably cruel, molesting Isabella on a regular basis. After a forced marriage to an old slave and bearing four children, Isabella defiantly left the Dumont house just a year before slavery was abolished in New York. As a free woman, she moved from house to house as a domestic until she finally went to New York City, changed her name, and grew into the religious leader and activist that make her famous today.

Though the facts of the story are well known, Sheehan offers a solid portrait of slavery that also brings the child and young woman to life.