Daniel J. Sharfstein

A scathing social critique traces the histories of three families from different eras of American history to reveal the nation's racial complexities, describing the black ancestry of elite white families whose progenitors sacrificed promising futures to become integrated.

Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White

The Invisible Line

One of the nation's most accomplished historians unravels the stories of three extraordinary families from different eras in American history to represent the complexity of race in America, and to force readers to rethink assumptions about race, racism, and civil rights.

“Beautifully wrought and impossible to put down, Daniel Sharfstein’s Thunder in the Mountains chronicles with compassion and grace that resonant past we should never forget.”—Brenda Wineapple, author of Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848–1877 After the Civil War and Reconstruction, a new struggle raged in the Northern Rockies. In the summer of 1877, General Oliver Otis Howard, a champion of African American civil rights, ruthlessly pursued hundreds of Nez Perce families who resisted moving onto a reservation. Standing in his way was Chief Joseph, a young leader who never stopped advocating for Native American sovereignty and equal rights. Thunder in the Mountains is the spellbinding story of two legendary figures and their epic clash of ideas about the meaning of freedom and the role of government in American life.

Daniel J. Sharfstein

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