Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson's Flight from Slavery

Passenger on the Pearl:  The True Story of Emily Edmonson's Flight from Slavery

The “compelling and inspiring” true story of one girl risking her life for a chance at freedom in the largest slave escape attempt in American history.

In 1848, thirteen-year-old Emily Edmonson, five of her siblings, and seventy other enslaved people boarded the Pearl under cover of night in Washington, D.C., hoping to sail north to freedom. Within a day, the schooner was captured, and the Edmonsons were sent to New Orleans to be sold into even crueler conditions. Through Emily Edmonson’s journey from enslaved person to teacher at a school for African American young women, Winifred Conkling illuminates the daily lives of enslaved people, the often-changing laws affecting them, and the high cost of a failed escape.

• Paperback, 202 pages
• 7" x 9"

Winifred Conkling is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction for young readers, including Passenger on the Pearl and Votes for Women! and the middle-grade novel Sylvia & Aki.