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Freedom Bound
Fiction. Young Adult Novel. African American Studies. In this, the final instalment of Jean Rae Baxter's best-selling young adult trilogy, eighteen-year-old Charlotte sails from Canada to Charleston in the beleaguered Thirteen Colonies to join her new husband Nick. During these final months of the American Revolution, she must muster all her wit and courage when she has to rescue Nick from being tortured as a spy in an alligator-infested South Carolina swamp. She must also find ways to bring freedom to a pair of teenage runaway slaves she has befriended. FREEDOM BOUND delivers a frank and realistic picture of the slave system and a powerful account of what was at stake for both white and black Loyalists as they prepared to find a new home in the country that was soon to be Canada. Like The Way Lies North and BROKEN TRAIL, the two novels that preceded it, FREEDOM BOUND contains a wealth of carefully researched historical details of one of the least known chapters of our history.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
251 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
13 people want to read
About the author
Jean Rae Baxter
14 books6 followersJean Rae Baxter holds a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Toronto and a B.Ed degree from Queen’s. She worked in radio before beginning her career as a secondary school English teacher in Lennox & Addington County, twenty miles west of Kingston. During this time she helped to develop curriculum in liaison with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
During her career in education, Baxter had little free time for her own writing, although she managed to produce a few poems, professional articles, and one-act plays that have been produced in schools and churches.
In 1996, when she returned from the Kingston area to her hometown, Hamilton, Baxter began to write in earnest. An interest in history had already led her into researching Canada’s past. Now she began to write about it, starting with the short story, “Farewell the Mohawk Valley,” which Ronsdale Press included in its anthology, Beginnings: Stories of Canada’s Past (2001). In 2005, she represented Ronsdale Press in Toronto at the Golden Oak Awards, for which Beginnings was shortlisted.
Baxter surprised herself by the discovery that she had a knack for the noir. The first short story she ever wrote, “The Quilt”, received first prize in the Canadian Writer’s Journal’s 2000 Competition. “Mother Wore a Hat” appeared in Lichen Literary Journal and “Depression Glass” in Other Voices. Insomniac Press published “Loss” in its anthology Hard Boiled Love (2003) and “A Wanton Disregard” in Revenge (2004), “The Catnappers” and “O Little Town” appeared in the Hamilton literary journal, Hammered Out. In 2003 and 2004 Baxter received the Arts Hamilton Award for the best story by a Hamilton writer. She has twice been shortlisted for the Canadian Authors’ Association Conference Contest. Seraphim Editions published her critically acclaimed collection of short stories, A Twist of Malice, in 2005.
She has read at venues in Hamilton, Burlington, Dundas, Toronto, Windsor, Cambridge, Kitchener, Port Hope, Cobourg, Kingston, Napanee, Wellington, Belleville and Trenton as well as at Hamilton’s Festival of Friends, Hamilton’s Grit Lit Festival, at the Eden Mills “Fringe” Festival and at Canadian “ex pat” gatherings in China and Romania.
Her young adult historical novel, The Way Lies North, was published by Ronsdale Press in 2007. For her second novel, which was released in April, 2008, she returned to crime. Her literary murder mystery, Looking for Cardenio, centres upon the discovery of an old manuscript that may be Shakespeare’s lost play.
As a member of Arts Hamilton’s Literary Advisory Committee and as one of the organizers of the LiT LiVe Reading Series, she is an active member of Hamilton’s writing community
During her career in education, Baxter had little free time for her own writing, although she managed to produce a few poems, professional articles, and one-act plays that have been produced in schools and churches.
In 1996, when she returned from the Kingston area to her hometown, Hamilton, Baxter began to write in earnest. An interest in history had already led her into researching Canada’s past. Now she began to write about it, starting with the short story, “Farewell the Mohawk Valley,” which Ronsdale Press included in its anthology, Beginnings: Stories of Canada’s Past (2001). In 2005, she represented Ronsdale Press in Toronto at the Golden Oak Awards, for which Beginnings was shortlisted.
Baxter surprised herself by the discovery that she had a knack for the noir. The first short story she ever wrote, “The Quilt”, received first prize in the Canadian Writer’s Journal’s 2000 Competition. “Mother Wore a Hat” appeared in Lichen Literary Journal and “Depression Glass” in Other Voices. Insomniac Press published “Loss” in its anthology Hard Boiled Love (2003) and “A Wanton Disregard” in Revenge (2004), “The Catnappers” and “O Little Town” appeared in the Hamilton literary journal, Hammered Out. In 2003 and 2004 Baxter received the Arts Hamilton Award for the best story by a Hamilton writer. She has twice been shortlisted for the Canadian Authors’ Association Conference Contest. Seraphim Editions published her critically acclaimed collection of short stories, A Twist of Malice, in 2005.
She has read at venues in Hamilton, Burlington, Dundas, Toronto, Windsor, Cambridge, Kitchener, Port Hope, Cobourg, Kingston, Napanee, Wellington, Belleville and Trenton as well as at Hamilton’s Festival of Friends, Hamilton’s Grit Lit Festival, at the Eden Mills “Fringe” Festival and at Canadian “ex pat” gatherings in China and Romania.
Her young adult historical novel, The Way Lies North, was published by Ronsdale Press in 2007. For her second novel, which was released in April, 2008, she returned to crime. Her literary murder mystery, Looking for Cardenio, centres upon the discovery of an old manuscript that may be Shakespeare’s lost play.
As a member of Arts Hamilton’s Literary Advisory Committee and as one of the organizers of the LiT LiVe Reading Series, she is an active member of Hamilton’s writing community
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June 11, 2013
This is the third book in the trilogy following the hardships of a Loyalist family forced from their homes in the Mohawk Valley. In the previous books, Broken Trail and The Way Lies North, we followed their trek to Canada. In this book, Charlotte, the heroine of this saga, follows her new husband to Charleston when the war between the Rebels and the English is at a crucial point. I love the writing style: accessible to young readers but sophisticated enough to satisfy adult readers. Through this trilogy, Baxter has given Canadian youth (and I believe she must have written for them), an inside look at a period in our history which is usually covered very drily in Canadian History high school classes.
Displaying 1 of 1 review