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Title of Book: Across The Wide River Click on the title in order to purchase your copy or view product details. By Stephanie Reed Early in life, Lowry Rankin learns the horror of slavery as he sees his friend, Sherwood, beaten. With his parent’s blessing and encouragement, 9-year-old Lowry helps his first refugee to freedom. When their home becomes the first stop on the Underground Railroad, the boy learns quickly how to lead refugees to the next stop. Overtime, Lowry has a difficult time choosing his life work. He thinks he’d like to be an abolition minister like his father, but feelings of inadequacy cause him to take a job in a print shop and later in a woodshop. Through it all, he continues his task of secretly helping people on their way North. ACROSS THE WIDE RIVER by Stephanie Reed follows Lowry into adulthood when he finally chooses his life work and the woman with whom he’ll spend his life. Both, the town of Ripley and the Rankin family existed. In her prologue, Reed points out that she has written the story of the Rankins and not their history. She lays out both sides of the slavery debate, but abolition clearly comes out winner. From illustrator John Lucas’ front cover, through page 176, the reader is pulled along as Stephanie Reed writes of a shameful time in American history. ACROSS THE WIDE RIVER is a book worth reading. Though Americans remember slavery in past tense, it continues to exist in other parts of the world. Stephanie Reed writes of slavery’s shame and its violence to the human body, soul, and spirit. I recommend ACROSS THE WIDE RIVER by Stephanie Reed. One of Reed’s characters ponders and learns the truth of the words, “know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) What might happen if we learn the truth of those words? |