# The Entailed Hat

> A sprawling historical novel of the old Delmarva country, drawing on the notorious kidnapping trade that preyed on free Black people along the border between slave and free states in early America.

Price: 9.50 USD · in stock

## About
Along the low, tidewater neck of land where the mid-Atlantic states meet, a dark traffic once flourished, and this novel plunges into that half-forgotten world with a storyteller's relish and an eye for its human cost.What it's aboutSet in the Delmarva peninsula of the earlier nineteenth century, the novel weaves a large cast of characters through a landscape shadowed by the kidnapping of free Black people into slavery, one of the era's ugliest crimes. Around this grim historical reality the author builds a broad narrative of families, fortunes, courtship and intrigue, rooted in the customs and speech of the region and its people.ThemesThe book turns on greed and conscience, on the porous and corruptible border between freedom and bondage, and on the moral compromises of a society that tolerated great wrongs at its margins. It sets private ambition and romance against a backdrop of exploitation, and asks what individuals owe to justice when the law itself looks away.Why it still mattersMuch popular history overlooks the reverse traffic that stole free people into slavery; this novel keeps the memory alive in vivid, particular form. As a portrait of a specific American region and its vanished ways, it preserves dialect, custom and atmosphere that would otherwise be lost, while confronting a crime whose legacy still demands attention.Who it's forFor readers of historical fiction with a strong sense of place, for those drawn to American regional writing, and for anyone interested in the neglected corners of the country's struggle over slavery and freedom.

## Specifications
- language: en
- format: paperback