Russell Banks · 1998 · overland

Russell Banks's 1998 novel, told by Owen Brown. From the family farm at North Elba in the Adirondacks, Owen follows his father, the abolitionist John Brown, into the bloody guerrilla war of Bleeding Kansas and at last to the doomed 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry - the blow against slavery that helped light the fuse of the American Civil War.

1. 1
   North Elba

   On a hardscrabble farm at North Elba, high in the Adirondacks among the free Black settlers he has come to help, John Brown broods over slavery and binds his sons, Owen among them, to his growing holy war against it.

2. 2
   Kansas

   The Browns ride west into Bleeding Kansas, where pro- and anti-slavery settlers murder one another over the territory. Here, at Pottawatomie, John Brown crosses into terror, and Owen is drawn deep into his father's violence.

3. 3
   Harpers Ferry

   It ends in Virginia, at the federal arsenal of Harpers Ferry, where Brown's tiny band seizes the armory to spark a slave uprising that never comes - a catastrophe that will send him to the gallows and the nation to war.