James McBride · 2013 · coming-of-age

James McBride's 2013 novel, narrated by Onion, an enslaved boy swept up by the abolitionist John Brown in Bleeding Kansas and mistaken, for years, for a girl. He rides with Brown's ragged army out of the Kansas battlegrounds, east to Frederick Douglass in Rochester and Harriet Tubman in Canada, and on at last to the doomed 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

1. 1
   Bleeding Kansas

   In the war-torn Kansas Territory, young Henry Shackleford is 'freed' by John Brown after a tavern shootout kills his master; taken for a girl and nicknamed Onion, he becomes the old man's lucky charm and mascot.

2. 2
   Rochester

   As Brown raids Kansas and Missouri and rides east to raise money and men, Onion is dragged along to Rochester to sit at the table of the great, vain, magnificent Frederick Douglass.

3. 3
   Canada

   Across the lake into Canada they go, seeking fighters for the coming blow, where Onion meets the silent, terrible, iron-willed Harriet Tubman - and sees how few will actually follow Brown to war.

4. 4
   Harpers Ferry

   At last Brown's dwindling band seizes the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, the doomed spark he believes will ignite a slave uprising - and Onion watches the raid, and the old man's legend, come apart around him.