All We Were Promised

All We Were Promised
by Ashton Lattimore
Ballantine Books, 2024. 357 pages. Fiction

Philadelphia, 1837. When nineteen-year-old Charlotte escaped from the deteriorating White Oaks plantation four years ago, she'd expected freedom to look completely different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. Instead, she's locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, hiding their past and identities to protect themselves from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives. Pennsylvania is a free state, yet abolitionists are struggling to establish a permanent home for the anti-slavery movement, as southern sympathizers incite violence against free Black people, and white vigilantes stalk the streets.

Undeterred, Charlotte sneaks out and forges an unlikely friendship with Nell, a member of one of Philadelphia's wealthiest Black families. When Evie, Charlotte's enslaved friend from White Oaks, shows up in the city, Charlotte and Nell conspire to help her flee North. Yet Charlotte's plans to help her friend threatens her own freedom as well.

I really appreciated the perspectives this story offers. It's not often that you read about how the slavery was perpetuated in the "free" states, and this book exhibits this with a great sense of time and place. Lattimore has written an engrossing, complex story where each character has interesting, and sometimes conflicting, desires and needs. This means that while this book offers a history lesson, readers are also equally invested in each character and in their friendship, making this book one that stands out in multiple ways.

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