Stand The Storm

In Stand The Storm, set in Civil War era Washington, D.C., I wanted to accomplish a narrative that created a fuller picture of urban enslavement in Washington, D.C. at mid-nineteenth-century. I wrote also about the Compensated Emancipation Act enacted by Abraham Lincoln that freed enslaved persons residing in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 1862, nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation. Now, much to my surprise, I’ve learned facts about my direct ancestor who gained his freedom under this edict along with his mother and grandmother. I’m delighted to learn that an event I’d written about in my fiction had a true historical impact on my family.

Published in 2008, Stand The Storm has recently become more personal to me and my family. Through the efforts of an intrepid family genealogist, I’ve discovered an ancestor who is documented as having been emancipated under the District of Columbia’s Compensated Emancipation Act of April, 1862. He was a ten year old boy at the time.

Read about Alfred Clarke and my reactions to this discovery: https://bit.ly/3HcuOHR

“Passionate, dramatic, and uplifting” (Washington Post), Stand the Storm is an “evocative, historically rich” novel (Time) from the author of River, Cross My Heart set among the free African American community of pre-Civil War Washington, DC.

Even though Sewing Annie Coats and her son, Gabriel, have managed to buy their freedom, their lives are still marked by constant struggle and sacrifice. Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, where the Coatses operate a tailor’s shop and laundry, is supposed to be a “promised land” for former slaves but is effectively a frontier town, gritty and dangerous, with no laws protecting black people.

The remarkable emotional energy with which the Coatses wage their daily battles-as they negotiate with their former owner, as they assist escaped slaves en route to freedom, as they prepare for the encroaching war, and as they strive to love each other enough-is what propels Stand the Storm and makes the novel’s tragic denouement so devastating.

“A gripping novel about a family’s heart-wrenching journey out of slavery.” —Baltimore Sun