Name: The Last Runaway
ISBN: 9780007517466

Tracy Chevalier

‘Addictively compelling’ The Times ‘A joy to read’ Maggie O’Farrell

The Last Runaway

Forced to leave England and struggling with illness in the wake of a family tragedy, Quaker Honor Bright is forced to rely on strangers in the harsh landscape of 1850 Ohio and is compelled to join the Underground Railroad network to help runaway slaves escape to freedom. By the best-selling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring.

elizabeth

Props to Chevalier to creating a character as full and as knowable as Honor. And, props to Chevalier to making 19th century Quaker Ohio an equally full world, made interesting and vibrantly depicted through Honor as a curious yet reserved newcomer. It's light but important, a step into an unglamorous history, like Chevalier's [superior] Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Most interesting to me was to witness Honor gradually develop. 

Early in the novel, thanks to her Quaker faith, Honor knows a given injustice is wrong, but does not seem to understand the very human "why" behind this conviction of her faith. She describes escaped enslaved persons (and Black people as a whole) in very broad and strokes, concluding that they all look the same. 

By the end of the novel, (view spoiler)[ Honor has examined her own prejudices and carved out ways to fight injustice within her own sphere of influence, sometimes at great risk to herself and her more-than-meets-the-eye in-laws. Her condemnation of injustice becomes more fully realized as it becomes more fully human and more rooted in relationship. Honor's descriptions of [runaway] enslaved persons become much more specific, illustrating her ability to view enslavement (and runaway hunting) as wrong because it violates humanity, not because [some] Quakers say it is wrong. (hide spoiler)]

As with any novel with a white protagonist dealing with racial injustice, there's a sprinkle of white saviorism. However, it's not quite The Help or To Kill a Mockingbird in that our "savior" is not rewarded or praised for her efforts; she benefits in no measurable way. And, Chevalier paints the Underground Railroad as a multiracial effort with Black women at the helm. Importantly, near the end of the novel, one such Black woman tells Honor what any white anti-racist could stand to hear:

"You jes' one small link in a big chain. Sure, we grateful for what you done, but we managed before you come along last year, and we'll manage without you. Someone will step into the gap, or the Railroad will shift, is all. We been doin' this a long time, and will be a long time more."

Tylar M

Terrible. How a Quaker helping runaway slaves became a side story to quilts (so much quilt talk!) and romances with unlikeable men is beyond me. One of these men being a slave catcher at that...

Eugenia Andino

Chevalier suele dedicar sus novelas a fantasear sobre cómo pudo realizarse una obra de arte famosa; en este caso, se pasa a la artesanía y escribe una novela histórica sobre una cuáquera implicada en el movimiento abolicionista, y sus colchas de patchwork. Le falta la chispa y la originalidad de novelas anteriores, pero es una lectura entretenida.

Fran Lewis

Chriss

Kathy Rodger 

Liz Prinz

Jenna Stefansdottir 

Jenni Pertuset

Karen Shimek

Bernadett

Maribel

When Quaker Honor Bright sails from Bristol with her sister, she is fleeing heartache for a new life in America, far from home. But tragedy leaves her alone and vulnerable, torn between two worlds and dependent on the kindness of strangers, and life in 1850s Ohio is precarious and unsentimental.

The Last Runaway

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