Sweet Taste of Liberty

With a historian's dispassionate clarity and a bit of irony, narrator Paul Heitsch, delivers the singular story of Henrietta Wood, a free Black woman who was living and working in Cincinnati in 1853 when she was kidnapped, taken south, and sold "down the river" to a Mississippi plantation owner. Wood went on to return home after the Civil War, regain her freedom, and raise a son. She also successfully sued the white man who sold her 20 years earlier for damages, the only formerly enslaved person ever to do so. Although it seems a missed opportunity not to have cast a Black narrator, this Pulitzer Prize-winning history provides a comprehensive, multifaceted overview of how slavery worked in the United States and is an absolute must-listen for our times. B.P. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine