“New Orleans - 1866. I had few pleasures to call my own. There was the peace found in the attic where I was made to board, the transporting comfort of the books in Mrs. Harper’s library, the deliciousness of the sweet bread I purchased with my allowance from the bakery down the road each Sunday of rest. But all of it paled in comparison to the joy brought upon me by Oliver, the terrier I considered my own.”
That’s the opening to Nathan Harris’ historical novel Amity. The speaker is Coleman, a fourteen-year-old freed slave who still lives with and works for his former owners, the Harpers. His older sister June left two years prior with Mr. Harper who was hoping to make his fortune in the silver mines in Mexico.
Coleman is unusual in his manner of speech and knowledge, having been allowed to educate himself with the Harper’s library. As the story begins, a strange man shows up at their New Orleans home saying he has come to escort Mrs. Harper, their daughter Florence, and Coleman to Mr. Harper. It’s a long, dangerous journey in which Florence and Coleman end up striking out on their own to try and find June and Mr. Harper.
In the meantime, June has become attracted to a Black Seminole who lives in an isolated community called Amity and sees the possibility of a life of freedom. As the book jacket says, this novel “delves into the critical years of the Civil War’s aftermath to deliver an intimate and epic tale of what freedom means in a society still determined to return its Black citizens to bondage.”
If you’re interested in a very well written story about what life was like for some freed slaves after the Civil War, then you must read Amity by Nathan Harris.
