From the Pulitzer-Prize–winning historian, an absorbing family saga of Virginia slavery and the earthshaking rebellion led by Nat Turner.
This powerful history of Virginia slavery is grounded in the daily life of a struggling plantation, Tower Hill, owned by generations of a local merchant family. A persistent debt that is both commercial and emotional drives the Blows—husbands and wives, fathers and sons—to turmoil and madness. The enslaved Blacks at Tower Hill live at the behest and often the violent whim of local whites. They claim as their own an evangelical Christianity that offers deliverance from suffering and a broad community of support and resistance. In 1831, Nat Turner’s rebellion arms that faith to attack slavery in the local counties. George Blow is instrumental to its suppression and to shaping the memory of an exceptional event led by a brilliant visionary who enthralled a few followers. But Alan Taylor shows the planned revolt to have included Black communities throughout the Tidewater and beyond. The shockwaves continued into secession and civil war.