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Published May 2015
320 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad's leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can't bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.
Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar - the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.
Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden's woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.
"McCoy carefully juxtaposes the past and the present, highlighting the characters' true introspection, and slowly revealing the unusual similarities in the two woman's lives, which leads to a riveting conclusion." - Publisher's Weekly
"Though the conclusion doesn't surprise, it satisfies." - Kirkus
"The Mapmaker's Children is marked by rich, closely observed storytelling full of warmth and heart." - Charles Frazier, New York Times bestselling author of National Book Award winner Cold Mountain
"I love the way this novel connects the past to the present. At first, these two heroines from different centuries seem to have little in common. But defining moments of bravery and resilience echo across generations for a truly satisfying story." - Laura Moriarty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chaperone
"Poignant and deeply absorbing. McCoy weaves this moving tale of two women finding their way with style and thoughtfulness." - Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Orange Prize winner The Song of Achilles
"Sarah McCoy has illuminated a forgotten corner of American history with her signature empathy and spirit." - Mary Doria Russell, author of Doc and Epitaph
This information about The Mapmaker's Children was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah McCoy is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of The Mapmaker's Children; The Baker's Daughter, a 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee; the novella "The Branch of Hazel," featured in the anthology Grand Central; and The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico.
Sarah's work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post and other publications. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso.
The daughter of an Army officer, her family was stationed in Germany during her childhood. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband, an Army physician, and dog, Gilbert, in El Paso, Texas.
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