Betty DeRamus, award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist, wrote this comment on the Amazon.com listing for Bruce Kemp's Letters From a Fugitive's Son.
"In Letters from a Fugitive’s Son, novelist Bruce Kemp uses the letters and memories of a free black 19th century man to tell a story that hasn’t been told enough: what it was like for black fighting men during America’s Civil War.
"Kemp’s major creation is Frederick Douglass Macdonald, the Canadian-born son of a man who escaped slavery in the U.S.
"The book gains much of its power by mingling fictional characters such as Macdonald (who echoes the experiences of real black spies such as John Scobel, Alfred Wood and Elizabeth Bowser) with historical figures. Macdonald exchanges letters with Mary Todd Lincoln and Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. He also meets legendary abolitionist John Brown, Dr. Anderson Abbott, Canada’s first black doctor, and Osborne Perry Anderson, the black raider who survived Brown’s fabled raid on Harpers’ Ferry.
"Yet it is the details in this well-written book that stick with you the most. I will never forget Kemp’s image of a Union soldier wearing a Southern lady’s bonnet to protect himself from the rain and the chill. Or how small and stunted were many of the black men rushing to fight for freedom. Or how Macdonald’s wife slowly lost her mind from the weight of her own startling war experiences. This is a work that grips you by the heart and never lets go. I highly recommend it."
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