The Mapmaker's Children by Sarah McCoy

When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.
   Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.
   Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.


About The Author

SARAH McCOY is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the novels THE MAPMAKER'S CHILDREN, THE BAKER'S DAUGHTER, THE TIME IT SNOWED IN PUERTO RICO, and "The Branch of Hazel," a novella in GRAND CENTRAL.

The Baker's Daughter was praised as "a beautiful heart-breaking gem of a novel" by Tatiana de Rosnay and "a thoughtful reading experience indeed" by Chris Bohjalian. The Baker's Daughter was a Doubleday/Literary Guild Book Club selection and a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Historical Fiction in 2012.

Sarah has taught writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. The daughter of an army officer, her family was stationed in Germany during her childhood. She currently lives with her husband, an army physician, and their dog, Gilly, in El Paso, Texas.


For more information on Sarah and her writing, visit her website: http://sarahmccoy.com/


My Review

 
Although this is a fictional account you will feel like your actually living history, especially with the account of Sarah Brown. She is an actual person, daughter of the Under Ground Railroad and abolitionist John Brown. I felt I was a part of this history, and walked in Sarah’s shoes, her ups and downs and a lot of heart ache. A talent that she uses for the good of humanity, and the risks she takes with her own life. The author has done such a wonderful job, and I loved how she crossed the enemy lines in her disguise.
The stories are tied together in an unusual way, finding a piece of Sarah’s work in a root cellar, and infertility binds the past and the present. The present being a young couple doing everything possible to have a child of their own, and the heartbreak of infertility.
We wind back and forth between the past and the present, Eden and her quest, and follow their lives as they come to terms to what has been their lot in life. How they accept what is given to the makes this book a compelling read.
I greatly enjoyed this book, and want to read more by Sarah McCoy and I loved her author notes at the end of this book.

I received this book through Blogging For Books and was not required to give a positive review.