Watermark Books and Cafe

Watermark Books & Cafe is pleased to welcome Leonard Pitts, Jr. for a reading and signing of his novel, Freeman.

Freeman tells three stories of courage, hardship, and faith that slowly coalesce around the town of Buford, Mississippi. The title character is Sam Freeman, a former slave who travels on foot a thousand miles through the ravaged South to find the woman he left behind 15 years earlier. Sam leaves the safety of his life in Philadelphia with no assurance that his wife, Tilda, is even alive. Only his abiding love for her and the memory of their dead son keeps him going as he faces the worst that humanity can offer.

Tilda, meanwhile, is being marched at gunpoint from the wreckage of her former master's ruined plantation in search of land outside the reach of the Union. Along the way, she is forced to grapple with questions of ownership, freedom, and her own agency in an echo of the wider African-American community as it deals with the radically altered landscape of Southern society.

The third story focuses on Prudence Kent, a wealthy young widow from Boston intent on starting a school for freed slaves deep in the heart of the former Confederacy. Prudence raises the ire of the local white population, who view her, a Yankee, as very nearly as alien to them as their former bondsmen.

This is a story of love, survival, and resilience, exquisitely told by Leonard Pitts, Jr. In Freeman, he has crafted a brilliant, intricate, heartbreaking work.

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Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald. He is the author of the novel Before I Forget, the memoir Becoming Dad, and Forward From This Moment: Selected Columns, 1994-2009.

Freeman (Paperback)

By Leonard Pitts

$16.00

ISBN-13: 9781932841640
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Agate Bolden, 5/2012

Other Editions of this Title

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