The author of Brady, Jean Fritz, wrote history, biography, and historical novels for children and young people. Just about anything she has written is worth reading. One could probably acquire a good working knowledge of American history from her books alone! She was born in China to American missionaries in 1915, lived until 2017, and won many literary awards for her work. There are many of her books in the Plumfield library system.
The geographical setting of the book is Pennsylvania and the chronological setting is before the Civil War. Brady is a pastor’s son whose mother and father take different positions on slavery. The division in their family mirrors the growing division in the country. One day Brady stumbles across Underground Railroad activity in the woods near his house. The Underground Railroad was a secret network for moving escaped slaves from the South on up to the free states and eventually Canada. Canada was part of the British Empire, which, thanks to the efforts of William Wilberforce, had abolished the slave trade and slavery not long before the time of the story. The network was composed of people who would secretly transport escaped slaves from one safe house to the next. Discovering this secret, in Pennsylvania near to him, forces Brady to choose where he stands on the issue of slavery and forces him to learn how to keep a secret, something he is not known to be very good at. This is an interesting book to read, with a dramatic story and a deep moral foundation that gives a picture of life in the United States before the Civil War when the issue of slavery was sweeping society.