Book Cover Image of Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson’s Flight from Slavery by Winifred Conkling

Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson’s Flight from Slavery
by Winifred Conkling

Publication Date: Jan 13, 2015
List Price: $17.95
Format: Hardcover, 176 pages
Classification: Nonfiction
Target Age Group: Young Adult
ISBN13: 9781616201968
Imprint: Algonquin Books
Publisher: Workman Publishing Co., Inc.
Parent Company: Workman Publishing Co., Inc.

Description of Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson’s Flight from Slavery by Winifred Conkling


The page-turning, heart-wrenching true story of one young woman willing to risk her safety and even her life for a chance at freedom in the largest slave escape attempt in American history.

In 1848, thirteen-year-old Emily Edmonson, five of her siblings, and seventy other enslaved people boarded the Pearl under cover of night in Washington, D.C., hoping to sail north to freedom. Within a day, the schooner was captured, and the Edmonsons were sent to New Orleans to be sold into even crueler conditions. Passenger on the Pearl is the story of this thwarted escape, of the ramifications of its attempt, and of a family for whom freedom was the ultimate goal.

Through an engaging narrative, informative sidebars, and more than fifty period photographs and illustrations, Winifred Conkling takes readers on Emily Edmonson’s journey from enslaved person to teacher at a school for African American young women. Conkling illuminates a turbulent time in American history, showing the daily lives of enslaved people, the often-changing laws affecting them, the high cost of a failed escape, and the stories of slave traders and abolitionists.



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