A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin

Susanna Ashton's book, "A Plausible Man," reveals the remarkable story of John Andrew Jackson, a fugitive slave who escaped to freedom and became an abolitionist. The book explores his life during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the restoration of white supremacy, and sheds light on his quest to liberate his enslaved family.

Format: Hardback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 19 September 2024
Publisher: The New Press

The remarkable story of the man behind the book that helped spark the Civil War is a stunning historical detective story. In December of 1850, a faculty wife in Brunswick, Maine, named Harriet Beecher Stowe hid a fugitive slave in her house. While John Andrew Jackson stayed for only one night, he made a lasting impression: drawing from this experience, Stowe began to write Uncle Toms Cabin, one of the most influential books in American history and the novel that helped inspire the overthrow of slavery in the United States. A Plausible Man unfolds as a historical detective story, as Susanna Ashton combs obscure records for evidence of Jacksons remarkable flight from slavery to freedom, his quest to liberate his enslaved family, and his emergence as an international advocate for abolition. This fresh and original work takes us through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the restoration of white supremacy—where we last glimpse Jackson losing his freedom again on a Southern chain gang. In the spirit of Tiya Miles's prizewinning All That She Carried and Erica Armstrong Dunbar's Never Caught, Susanna Ashton breathes life into a striving and nuanced American character, one unmistakably rooted in the vast sweep of nineteenth-century America.

Weight: 622g
Dimension: 241 x 160 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781620978191