A Perilous Proposal
In the opening pages of this inspirational novel, the first in the Carolina Cousins series, Master Winegaard has assigned Jake Patterson to work with the adult slaves. Jake happens upon a white drifter attacking his mother. Already outraged over his father’s disappearance, Jake kills the attacker and then attends to his dying mother. He is captured by Confederates while running for safety in the north. Escaping with wounds, Jake encounters Union forces who take him into camp. There a black soldier, Micah Duff, supplies him with medicine and food while lecturing Jake about anger management. Running again to find his father in the Carolinas, he circles back to the Dawson plantation, now under attack by raiders. Once in the Carolinas he finds his father, Hank, who tells a different story of being sent away. In working for pay as a free man, Jake comes upon a former slave girl with whom he falls in love.
The author stresses the equality of African Americans through a narrative filled with emotion and suffering. Well-researched historical examples from Civil War times, such as hooded night riders and gangsters burning property, enhance the telling of this true-to-life tale.
