Philadelphia author Lorene Cary penned her way into literary history over a decade ago with her most famous work, the stunning memoir Black Ice. In 1995, she published The Price of a Child, and the novel was chosen as the inaugural One Book, One Philadelphia selection. Tied in with over 150 book-related activities scheduled between February and April of 2003, it was read by over 40,000 Philadelphians. Grabbing hold of a new audience with Free! Great Escapes from Slavery on the Underground Railroad (New City Press), Cary continues to peer into history's lens with her first young adult book, a collection of harrowing nonfiction Underground Railroad stories.

While writing The Price of a Child, Cary was inundated with hundreds of slave escape stories documented by William Still, co-chair of the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Committee for the Abolition of Slavery, and the son of an escaped slave. It soon became painfully evident that these stories of freedom were almost completely absent from the author's own education. American history books covered the Middle Passage and the institution of slavery, but it was a blur; the details the author yearned for simply weren't there. In her new book's introduction, Cary writes, "I chose stories with mostly successful endings and not-too-intense passages, a balance of male-female, and a variety of escape strategies that use wit, courage, sheer physical power, will, cunning—and outrageous hope. They allow our 21st-century minds to imagine actively the inner lives of enslaved people—and put ourselves in their places, not with shame, but compassion and respect."

Twelve true stories later, readers will have traveled with Robert Brown as he plunged into the Potomac River on horseback (through freezing rain, he rode half a mile in the water to freedom), with a pregnant woman packaged in a wooden box filled with straw and shipped to freedom, and with the man who held onto the bow of a ship, splashing in and out of the cold ocean for 24 hours before calling out to sailors. Accurate and amazing, Free! should be part of curriculums for all ages.