Conkling, Winifred. Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson’s Flight from Slavery. 2015. 176p. Algonuin, $17.95 (978-1-61620-196-8). Gr. 6-up.
In 1848, Emily Edmonson and her five siblings boarded the Pearl along with seventy other enslaved people in the hopes of escaping a life of slavery. Unfortunately, the Pearl was thwarted and the Edmonson children were punished by being sold further south, to New Orleans. But Emily’s story does not end there. Emily and her sister Mary never gave up on their hope of freedom, and galvanized the attention of prominent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglas and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Emily and her siblings were ultimately granted their freedom and Emily went on to become a school teacher at a school for African American girls.
