Stealing Freedom

About this book

Twelve-year-old Ann Maria Weems works from sunup to sundown wraps rags around her feet in the winter and must do whatever her master or mistress orders--but she has something that many plantation slaves dont have. She has her wonderful family around her. To Ann her teasing brothers her older sister and her protective and loving parents are everything. And then one day they are gone. Separated from her family by her master and shipped off as a housemaid Ann learns something about independence and about love before the opportunity for escape arrives. A white man risks his life for Ann cuts her hair short dresses her like a boy and launches her on her journey on the Underground Railroad to Canada her family and finally to freedom. Until she was a teenager Ann Maria Weems lived in the mid-1800s near the authors home in Maryland. This fictionalized account of her extraordinary life is ideal for students teachers and parents hungry for interesting and informative reading in African-American history and the Underground Railroad.