307 pp, 9 1/4" H. B&w illustrations, maps. "Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group. Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation, John Washington an urban slave in Virginia. Both men saw opportunity in the chaos of the Civil War, both escaped North, and both left us remarkable accounts of their flights to freedom. Handed down through family and friends, these narratives tell gripping stories of escape. (But this book) is also the discovery of two lives. Working from an unusual abundance of genealogical material, (the author) has reconstructed Turnage's and Washington's childhoods as sons of white slaveholders, their service as cooks and camp hands during the Civil War, and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families. (Here) we find a revelatory new answer to the question of how four million people moved from slavery to freedom." Wrinkling at the bottom of the spine. Dust jacket has light colour fading on the spine, minor edge wear/wrinkling at top/bottom of hinges and flap-folds.