Based on the true sto­ry of female abo­li­tion­ist Ann Phillips and her con­nec­tion to Antho­ny Burns, a young man who briefly escaped Amer­i­can slav­ery and rocked the nation with his astound­ing­ly hero­ic story.

A pas­sion­ate advo­cate of abo­li­tion from her ear­li­est years, Ann’s activism was derailed just before her twen­ty-fourth birth­day when she fell sick with a mys­te­ri­ous ill­ness. In order to pro­tect her frag­ile health, her hus­band, the famous abo­li­tion­ist Wen­dell Phillips, for­bade her from join­ing any fur­ther anti-slav­ery out­ings. Even so, when fugi­tive slave Antho­ny Burns is appre­hend­ed in Boston, Ann is deter­mined to help him, no mat­ter what it costs her.

With a par­tic­u­lar focus on the predica­ment of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry women who want­ed to effect change despite the restric­tions soci­ety imposed on them, The Stock­well Let­ters takes a deep dive into the har­row­ing con­di­tions of the ante­bel­lum South and the obsta­cles faced by abo­li­tion­ists who fought tire­less­ly to erad­i­cate slav­ery. A fast-paced, arrest­ing recount­ing of Amer­i­ca’s not-so-dis­tant his­to­ry, the sto­ry will stay with read­ers long after the final page.