The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier

Reviewed by Ellen

Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier

Ratings Explanation

Language: Most of the general swear words, plus a few profanities (Oh Lord, Jesus Christ Almighty, Jesus H. Christ) and the word nigger.

Violence: A fistfight. Slave owners trapping and abusing slaves. One runaway slave has his foot caught in a steel trap, which leads to gangrene and his eventual death. A man drags a slave behind his horse. A slave owner traps his runaway slave and the Quaker man who is helping him in a barn, locks the door and sets fire to it, killing them both. A woman shoots a man in the chest and kills him.

Sexual Content: A Quaker woman, Honor, has lustful feelings for Jack when he looks at her. Honor and Jack lay down in a cornfield and do what she refers to as “coupling” before they are married (a mildly detailed description of this). This act confirms their engagement. Throughout the book, there are references to their coupling, including Jack’s “pumping away” and Honor’s worry that their rattling the walls will wake Jack’s sister in the next room. Honor fights an attraction to a man who is not her husband.

Adult Themes: People drink whiskey and chew tobacco. The abuse of slaves and the hiding of them by people on the Underground Railroad is a central theme in this novel.

Synopsis

Honor Bright is a young Quaker woman from England who sails to America with her sister to start a new life. Honor’s fiance in England has just jilted her, and her sister is engaged to a man who has gone to Ohio to live among the Quaker people there. But upon setting foot in America, her sister suddenly becomes ill and dies, leaving Honor to find her own way to Ohio and break the news to her sister’s fiance. Once there, she has nowhere else to go and must live with the man who would have been her brother-in-law, an awkward situation for the quiet, introverted Honor. She soon meets Jack Haymaker, a young Quaker man who takes an interest in her. Realizing her prospects for romance in this small Quaker town are slim, Honor agrees to marry Jack and soon finds herself sharing a house with his domineering mother and sister. The year is 1850, and runaway slaves seeking shelter in the North are not uncommon in the cornfields of Ohio. When Honor decides to help the runaways, she is met with contempt and threats from her new family. This was not what she thought living in America would be like. Nor did she think she would also have this problem: an inexplicable attraction to Donovan Mills–the slave hunter. Her name comes to be symbolic of the life she must choose: a life of pure integrity for holding true to what she believes in, or suppressing her beliefs to be true to the new family who has welcomed her.

Ms. Chevalier, as is typical with her novels, did an extensive amount of research to create a realistic setting for this particular period in history. Her talent lies in turning scenes of ordinary life (rocking in a chair on the porch, stitching a quilt, watching a hummingbird sip from a flower) into exquisite and colorful portraits. While this book is written for adults, teens might benefit from the historical context. A glimpse into the life of Quakers or those “working” on the Underground Railroad, after all, is completely unfamiliar territory for most readers. Some of the sexual scenes are quite straightforward (I hesitate to use “explicit”), so I would recommend upper high school level and older.