A Walk Among Blue Slate Markers

A Walk Among Blue Slate Markers is a historical novel about that "peculiar institution" called slavery. In the early seventeen hundreds, Tobias Rutherford, a shopkeeper in Liverpool, England, sets in motion a cruel chain of events that followed his son, Winfield, across the Atlantic Ocean and into his mansion at Irongate Plantation. Winfield and his wife, Beatrice, are consumed with jealousy and hatred, not only for each other, but for their house slaves, as well. And when passions erupt in candlelit bedrooms, Winfield attempts murder and Beatrice forces Absalom, a house slave, to commit a crime, that if revealed, would find him hanging from the end of a rope. After Winfield's death, Matilda, his great-great granddaughter continues the violence. Out of revenge, she accuses Celia Godwin, a free black, of harboring a slave. The slave is thought to be a Rutherford, but old Dulcie, midwife at Irongate, is made to swear that Cressa, a slave girl, gave birth to the child. In the end, it is Tobias' great-great-great granddaughter, who becomes the victim to violence at the hands of runaway slaves.