"Multilayered, compassionate, and thought-provoking." -- "Kirkus Reviews" (starred review) Thirteen-year-old Sophie isn't happy about spending the summer of 1960 at her grandmother's old house in the bayou. Bored and lonely, she can't resist exploring the house's maze, or making an impulsive wish for a fantasy-book adventure with herself as the heroine. What she gets instead is a real adventure: a trip back in time to 1860 and the race-haunted world of her family's Louisiana sugar plantation. Here, President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is still two years in the future and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment is almost four years away. And here, Sophie is mistaken, by her own ancestors, for a slave.
Industry Reviews
Sherman has created a finely honed work of art, a novel that deals eloquently with complex and intersecting issues of race, womanhood, class and age. In transporting the reader so fully into another time, The Freedom Maze becomes timeless. This is true magic.--Alaya Dawn Johnson, author of The Summer Prince "Kirkus Reviews" Best Books of 2011 "Multilayered, compassionate and thought-provoking, a timely read on the sesquicentennial of America's Civil War."--"Kirkus Reviews" (*starred review*) "Sherman has created a finely honed work of art, a novel that deals eloquently with complex and intersecting issues of race, womanhood, class and age. In transporting the reader so fully into another time, "The Freedom Maze" becomes timeless."--Alaya Dawn Johnson, author of "Moonshine" "A seamless blending of wondrous American myth with harsh American reality, as befits young Sophie's coming-of-age. I think younger readers and adults alike will be completely riveted by her magical journey into her own family's double-edged past."--N. K. Jemisin, author of "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms" "Beautifully imagined and told with satisfyingly matter-of-fact detail: pot liquor and spoon bread, whips and Spanish Moss, corset covers and veves and bitter, healing herbs. "The Freedom Maze" is deep, meaningful fun."--Nisi Shawl, author of "Filter House" "Exposes a wide sweep through a narrow aperture, where the arbitrary nature of race and ownership, kindred and love, are illuminated in the harsh seeking glare of an adolescent's coming of age."--Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing "This book puts the lie to those today making loose political statements about happy, comfortable slave families of that brutal era while telling a strong story that will not let the young reader stop turning pages to see how things will work out for Sophie and her fellow slaves, especially the cook Africa, and house slaves Antigua and Canada. I was mesmerized."--Jane Yolen, author of "The Devil's Arithmetic" "A riveting, fearless, and masterful novel. I loved Sophie completely."--Nancy Werlin, author of "Extraordinary" "A subtle and haunting book that examines what it means to be who we are."--Holly Black, co-author of The Spiderwick Chronic "Multilayered, compassionate and thought-provoking, a timely read on the sesquicentennial of America's Civil War."--"Kirkus Reviews" (*starred review*) "Sherman has created a finely honed work of art, a novel that deals eloquently with complex and intersecting issues of race, womanhood, class and age. In transporting the reader so fully into another time, "The Freedom Maze" becomes timeless."--Alaya Dawn Johnson, author of "Moonshine" "A seamless blending of wondrous American myth with harsh American reality, as befits young Sophie's coming-of-age. I think younger readers and adults alike will be completely riveted by her magical journey into her own family's double-edged past."--N. K. Jemisin, author of "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms" "Beautifully imagined and told with satisfyingly matter-of-fact detail: pot liquor and spoon bread, whips and Spanish Moss, corset covers and veves and bitter, healing herbs. "The Freedom Maze" is deep, meaningful fun."
