My oldest daughter started high school this year and this is a book that she is reading for her early american history class. I homeschool my children and I realize that most of the books that my kids have to read for the classes are ones that I never read and weren't assigned reading for me in my classes in high school. So I picked this up and we read it together. We read it during the summer and the first week of this school year which was the beginning of August.
The edition that she read was heavily edited and omitted the use of the N word that is of course used because of the time period and the subject matter. If you haven't read Uncle Tom's Cabin, it is set in slave era America before the civil war. We start off with a white family named Shelby. They are having to deal with debt and they are meeting with a trader to settle some debts. The trader is a real piece of work who is very creepy towards Eliza but wants her little boy Henry. Mr Shelbys ends up making a deal and selling Henry and a guy named Tom who is like the rock of the family. He is loyal to his master and doesn't make trouble and he is very vocal about the Lord and doing right by Him.
To save Henry, Eliza ends up running away up north to Canada. Tom is sold to a fellow from New Orleans and ends up befriending the little girl of the family who ends up dying of an illness. His master is so distraught by his father's death that he ends up getting killed in a bar fight and his wife is a nasty piece of work saying that all slaves benefit from being enslaved and that they will not be better off being free. She sells Tom and he goes to the worst man who treats everyone awfully.
I had no idea going into this how much I would care for every single character and how much I wanted to just jump in the book and free every single slave right on the spot.
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