Eventually I wanted to fix my own sentences rather than others’, so I quit and did the MA. (Yup, still nerdy.) Learned how to research and how to make sentences better. Even have dual citizenship – though I keep the American accent intact.ġ English husband + 1 English son + 1 tortoiseshell cat.īefore writing, was a reference book editor, working on encyclopedias about writers. I’m still in London, and still not entirely serious. I had studied for a semester in London and thought it was a great place, so came over for fun, expecting to go back to the US after 6 months to get serious. Moved to London after graduating from Oberlin in 1984. Why doesn’t anyone ask that of professional singers, painters, dancers? That year forced me to write all the time and take it seriously. There’s a lot of debate about whether or not you can be taught to write. MA in creative writing, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, 1994. No one was surprised that I went there I was made for such a progressive, liberal place.

Montgomery.īA in English, Oberlin College, Ohio, 1984. Book I would have taken to a desert island: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Favorite authors back then: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madeleine L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Joan Aiken, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander. Spent a lot of time lying on my bed reading. Father was a photographer for The Washington Post. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes in, whatever the personal costs.Ī powerful journey brimming with color and drama, The Last Runaway is Tracy Chevalier’s vivid engagement with an iconic part of American history.ġ9 October 1962 in Washington, DC. However, drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network helping runaway slaves escape to freedom, Honor befriends two surprising women who embody the remarkable power of defiance. In her new home Honor discovers that principles count for little, even within a religious community meant to be committed to human equality.

Nineteenth-century America is practical, precarious, and unsentimental, and scarred by the continuing injustice of slavery. Sick from the moment she leaves England, and fleeing personal disappointment, she is forced by family tragedy to rely on strangers in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape.

In New York Times bestselling author Tracy Chevalier’s newest historical saga, she introduces Honor Bright, a modest English Quaker who moves to Ohio in 1850, only to find herself alienated and alone in a strange land. New York Times bestselling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier makes her first fictional foray into the American past in The Last Runaway, bringing to life the Underground Railroad and illuminating the principles, passions and realities that fueled this extraordinary freedom movement.

The last runaway book