Go South to Freedom

Gaillard (Journey to the Wilderness) recounts a family story told to him by a friend, Robert Croshon, about an escape led by Croshon’s enslaved great-grandfather, Gilbert Fields, as he fled a Georgia plantation “sometime well before the Civil War, probably in the 1830s.” Reflecting the nature of the story as one passed down orally between generations, Gaillard adopts the informal voice of one of Fields’s descendants: “I was just a boy the first time I heart it, probably ’bout the age that you are now,” he writes after describing a perilous trek across a creek that claimed the life of one of Fields’s daughters. As Fields and his family attempt to flee to Savannah, a storm prevents them from using the Big Dipper as their guide; after getting turned around, they decide to head for Mobile, Ala. Gaillard weaves information about the history of the Black Seminoles into the story—including a cameo by one of the community’s real-life leaders, John Horse—though these circuitously described details can dissipate some of the tension from the in-progress escape. Rush provides rough black-and-white sketches throughout. Ages 10–up. [em](Sept.) [/em]