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No Choice But Freedom: A Novel of Treachery and Triumph in Colonial America
By Pat Mattaini Mestern
ISBN: 978-0-9970119-0-6
Retail: $9.99
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Description:
Based on the true stories of English woman Elizabeth Bagley Morrison, who made a mark in Colonial America with her far-reaching ideals, and William Servos Hult, an African slave who won his freedom and rose to prominence in the spice trade before immigrating to Canada. Mestern has woven truth through her fiction's fabric, creating a tale of people and principles at the founding of our nation.
England, Scotland and British Colonial America, in particular Virginia and the Carolinas are the settings for a regency novel that is full of murderous intent, deception, revenge, questionable loyalties and intrigue.
Joanna Turnbull’s marriage to Talbot Showcroft is foundering in the wake of his emigration to the colonies, leaving her and their baby son in the care of her dictatorial father who encumbered her marriage with an unusual nuptial agreement. Her best friend Katie has been disowned by her father for taking up with a fugitive Scot fleeing the aftermath of the battle of Culloden. Joanna resolves the issues by moving to the Colonies, taking Katie and her husband with her. The book’s title is appropriate. As the plot wraps around the issues of loyalty to family and personal principles, each of the characters faces his or her own choices of depravity or virtue, slavery or freedom.
Praise for No Choice But Freedom:
"Pat Mestern's meteoric imagination has never been more impressive than in this empowering, almost epic, Colonial American period piece about a woman whose destiny was bartered most unexpectedly and whose fierce resistance against injustice to not only herself but those in her sphere of influence is so thoroughly convincing one can easily imagine it to be an historical account rather than the clever weave of fiction that, in reality, it is." -- J. Marshal Craig, actor, playwright
"No Choice But Freedom is a wonderful historical piece dealing with the issues of slavery and a women's right to voice her opinion on the subject during a time when it was not appropriate to do so. A well-to-do English woman makes a journey by ship to colonial America to be with her husband, who is unfaithful and has his own reasons for the marriage. She soon finds that life in the colonies is not what she is used to in England, but prevails when faced with the unexpected challenges. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Historical Fiction, Women's Literature, or Slavery in early America." -- Jessica Lynn Chubet