Synopses & Reviews
It is a spring morning in New Orleans, 1843. In the Spanish Quarter, on a street lined with flophouses and gambling dens, Madame Carl recognizes a face from her past. It is the face of a German girl, Sally Miller, who disappeared twenty-five years earlier. But the young woman is property, the slave of a nearby cabaret owner. She has no memory of a "white" past. Yet her resemblance to her mother is striking, and she bears two telltale birthmarks.
In brilliant novelistic detail, award-winning historian John Bailey reconstructs the exotic sights, sounds, and smells of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, as well as the incredible twists and turns of Sally Miller's celebrated and sensational case. Did Miller, as her relatives sought to prove, arrive from Germany under perilous circumstances as an indentured servant or was she, as her master claimed, part African, and a slave for life?
A tour de force of investigative history that reads like a suspense novel, The Lost German Slave Girl is a fascinating exploration of slavery and its laws, a brilliant reconstruction of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, and a riveting courtroom drama. It is also an unforgettable portrait of a young woman in pursuit of freedom.
Review
"An eye-opener to the racism that's so deeply embedded in the fabric of American society." Kirkus Reviews
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"Bailey plays historical detective as he re-creates one of the most sensational trial cases of the nineteenth century....This fast-paced legal reconstruction reads like a work of fiction." Booklist
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"[A] deft and captivating plot with astonishing detail culled from historical and archival records. Highly recommended." Library Journal
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"In the 19th century, the story of Sally Miller was seen as the shocking tale of a white woman trapped in slavery and her desperate struggles to win freedom. More than a century later, historian John Bailey reexamines the evidence and reveals a quite different, even more compelling, tale." Gregory M. Lamb, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire Christian Science Monitor)