SOON BE FREE

In this ambitious but convoluted piece of semi-fiction, Lois Ruby builds a story from historical facts surrounding the Underground Railroad. Meant as a companion to Steal Away Home (not reviewed) Ruby sets her narrative in alternating chapters that bounce back and forth by 150 years. In the late–20th century Dana lives with her parents in a bed & breakfast, a house that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad and occupied by the young James Weaver. When Dana catches their first guests prowling around late at night in the closets and bathrooms, she tries to piece together how this is linked to the rich history of the house and to the demise of the Delaware Indians. Meanwhile, in the 1857 chapters, the reader learns how events transpired as we follow James Weaver on a harrowing trek to bring a family of slaves to freedom. After many miles and many dangers James and those in his care are nearly home-free when he is forced to make a devastating choice between saving the slaves with whom he has traveled so long and hiding the treaty which could save Delaware Indians and their land. Ruby drafts her main characters, James and Dana, with care and depth, but a number of peripheral characters are mere tracings. It is easy to become disoriented by the jumble of people and events and the flip-flopping of time periods is disconcerting. By dramatizing these episodes, Ruby recreates the evils waged against both Native Americans and African-Americans in this country, but this effort would have been more successful had she concentrated on the historical half of her tale. (Fiction. 8-12)