Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

You do not need to read the Crafts book about their escape from slavery before reading Woo's account. But if you do not need read it afterward, there is something wrong.

The Crafts were a married couple who escaped from Macon, Georgia by the wife, Ellen, posing as a white man and the husband, William, posing as his(her) slave. They were enslaved by different people. Ellen, as with many enslaved people, being enslaved by her half sister; William enslaved by a man who "allowed" William to be hired out as the skilled craftsman and then took his wages.

The book is largely concerned with their escape - both in terms of going North in the US and then, later, the reasons for their journey to Liverpool in the UK. Woo's narrative concerning the run from Georgia to Philadelphia is edge of the seat reading, and I say this as someone who read the Crafts own account of their flight Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (Large Print Edition): or The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (you can easily get an ebook version for free).

I do wish that the book detail more with their time afterwards in London. They were part of a group that called attention to the immorality and evils of slavery during the Great Exhibition, and that is pretty much where the book ends. In a Coda, Woo gives a short chapter about what they did after and some of that sounds just as interesting. William, for instance, traveled back to Africa and worked to end slavery there as well.

What I really did enjoy was that Woo works in how both racism and sexism factored into how the Crafts were seen and how they at times presented themselves.