It is a spring morning in New Orleans, 1843. In the Spanish Quarter, on a street lined with flophouses and gambling dens, Madame Carl recognizes a face from her past. It is the face of a German girl, Sally Miller, who disappeared 25 years earlier. But the young woman is property, the slave of a nearby cabaret owner. She has no memory of a “white” past. Yet her resemblance to her mother is … striking, and she bears two telltale birthmarks. In brilliant novelistic detail, award-winning historian John Bailey reconstructs the exotic sights, sounds, and smells of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, as well as the incredible twists and turns of Sally Miller’s celebrated and sensational case. Did Miller, as her relatives sought to prove, arrive from Germany under perilous circumstances as an indentured servant or was she, as her master claimed, part African, and a slave for life? A tour de force of investigative history that reads like a suspense novel, The Lost German Slave Girl is a fascinating exploration of slavery and its laws, a brilliant reconstruction of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, and a riveting courtroom drama. It is also an unforgettable portrait of a young woman in pursuit of freedom.
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I learned so much from this book. I would have never read all those court cases and documents on their own, but because they were directly related to this poor girl, I did. The author put a huge amount of work and research into this book and I appreciate it. I learned more about the times of slavery in this one book then all of my years of …
What could happen to the young children of colonial immigrants if their parents became very ill or died on board ship? The answer is that without an adult taking care of them, children could be sold into indentured servitude or even slavery, losing both their identity and their freedom. This well researched book tells the story of one such …
The Müller family, including daughter Salomé, emigrated to the United States from Alsace in 1817, following years of war and famine in their native land. Like many immigrants, they endured a harrowing crossing that claimed the lives of the Müller mother and one son, only to arrive in America (along with many other family members, neighbors, and …