THE MAPMAKER'S CHILDREN (Sarah McCoy)

I think that all of us are fascinated by the Underground Railroad, active before and during the Civil War and instrumental in leading many slaves to freedom in the northern states.  Sarah Brown the daughter of ardent abolitionist John Brown, is a talented artist who puts her skills to work creating maps on cloth, paper, and dolls' faces to help guide escaped slaves out of the south in this fictionalized story of her life.  After an illness leaves her unable to bear children, she eschews love and marriage and instead continues working to free slaves.

In a related story, a modern-day woman, Eden, has moved to an old house in North Carolina with her husband.  Unable to conceive, Eden becomes increasing depressed and plans to end her marriage despite her love for her husband.  When she discovers a painted porcelain doll's head in her root cellar she becomes interested in discovering its origins and how it came to be left in the house.  Hence, the tie-in to Sarah Brown. Personally, while I enjoyed the modern-day issues of the current tenants of the house, I think that this may have been better written as 2 separate novels.  There didn't seem to be enough of a connection between the events of the past and those of the future.

I was curious about whether Sarah Brown was a real person and I found that John Brown actually had 20 children from 2 marriages.  Two of then were named Sarah, one who died at age 9 in 1843 and another born in 1846.  It is the second Sarah that is the focus of this novel.  She actually was educated at Concord and met Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott and she did eventually become an artist of some note in California, but there is no mention in her biography (http://www.saratogahistory.com/History/sarah_brown.htm) of abolitionist activity.  McCoy has done a nice job of taking a real person and expanding her story to what could have been.  As usual, I did enjoy the present-past connection in Sarah and Eden's stories, however slight it was.  This novel wan't the best, but it was worth reading, especially if you have an interest in the Underground Railroad.