The Mapmaker’s Children, A Novel written by Sarah Mc Coy
I was so excited to see this book come in the mail! The book was about one of the subjects that I really like to read about, The Under Ground Railroad, the people who traveled it and the people who made it work. This book was to be about Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown. She would draw maps with codes hidden in her map to help slaves get from one point to another. I kept hoping that the story would be more about Sarah and the people who got moved from one point to another all with the slave hunters on their trail.
There was an alternating story about Eden a modern day woman who so wants to conceive a child, and can’t. She moves into a house that was used for one of the points in the Underground Railroad. I didn’t enjoy reading about Eden, her life, she seemed to be all about carrying a child, and how miserable she was, and less and less about finding clues in the house that it was a apart of the UGRR.
The book just didn’t keep my interest as much as I tried I would lie the book down more than I would pick it up. I had to force myself to keep reading. I kept waiting for more details on the part of the story I thought should be there. They never were. I don’t usually write reviews with negative tones, but I can’t seem to help it, I didn’t really enjoy the book. I was disappointed. I checked out other reviews and found I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. I don’t always like books that alternate from one story line to another unless they are really greatly fleshed out, showing how one couldn’t be there without the other. This book didn’t do that for me, I’m sorry to say. There were many who enjoyed the book and wrote positive reviews, if you want to read the b hook, don’t let my review keep you from it.
"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this honest review."
More about the book: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Baker's Daughter, a story of family, love, and courage
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril. Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.
Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SARAH McCOY is the New York Times bestselling author of the 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee The Baker’s Daughter and The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband and their dog, Gilbert, in El Paso, Texas.
