Synopsis
Someone is setting fires in New York City. It is 1741 and, as a colony of Britain, America is at war with Spain. The people in New York City are on a heightened state of alert, living in fear of Catholics acting as Spanish secret agents. Phoebe, an enslaved girl, watches as the town erupts into mass hysteria when the whites in New York City convince themselves that the black slaves are planning an uprising. Her best friend, Cuffee, is implicated in the plot, and the king's men promise to let him go if he names names. Several people are hanged and many more are burned at the stake, but the mob won't rest until they find a mastermind behind the plan, someone Catholic and white-and there's suspicion that Phoebe's teacher Mr Ury is a priest.
Reviews
Grade 5-9–Burnings of homes and warehouses and fears of a slave uprising fuel massacres of black people in New York during the mid 1700s. Phoebe's master, an assemblyman, is kind to the young teen and has done much to help and protect her and his other slaves from any finger-pointing by neighbors and the local magistrates. But when Cuffee, Phoebe's fellow servant and dear friend, is accused and arrested for treason, the girl's world begins to crumble around her. Influenced by public opinion, her master does nothing to help her friend, and Cuffee is sentenced to death. Portraying a tragic tale of historical significance, this book is charged with heated politics, suspenseful intrigue, and murder. True to Rinaldi's approach, the author explains this story as "being one that people may have heard of but don't know anything about." The page-turning, complex plot unfolds quickly. Readers will be readily absorbed by Phoebe's emotional turmoil and struggle to be true to those she loves.–Kimberly Monaghan, formerly at Vernon Area Public Library, IL
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Gr. 7-10. When a rash of fires breaks out in eighteenth-century New York City, indentured white servants, many of whom purchase their freedom by testifying, lead the accusations against the black population of inciting a "negro uprising." Fourteen-year-old Phoebe is horrified when Cuffee, a beloved fellow slave in the house where she works, is among the indicted. While the city descends into terrifying chaos and suspects are burned at the stake, Phoebe faces overwhelming, even shocking ethical decisions: Would she betray a friend for her own freedom? Would she give a condemned friend poison to save him from feeling the flames? Rinaldi writes a tense historical novel about racial brutalities in old New York and the fearsome irrational power of a mob that, "like a caterpillar," has "many arms and legs but only one head." The horror is graphic (there are descriptions of burning bodies) but not sensationalized, and the gripping moral questions draw parallels to contemporary racism and capital punishment. This is uncomfortable reading, but the vivid, important story will stay with the audience. Gillian Engberg
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