A Walk Among Blue Slate Markers

<I>A Walk Among Blue Slate Markers</I> is a historical novel about that peculiar institution called slavery. In the early seventeen hundreds Tobias Rutherford a shopkeeper in Liverpool England sets in motion a cruel chain of events that followed his son Winfield across the Atlantic Ocean and into his mansion at Irongate Plantation. Winfield and his wife Beatrice are consumed with jealousy and hatred not only for each other but for their house slaves as well. And when passions erupt in candlelit bedrooms Winfield attempts murder and Beatrice forces Absalom a house slave to commit a crime that if revealed would find him hanging from the end of a rope. After Winfield's death Matilda his great-great granddaughter continues the violence. Out of revenge she accuses Celia Godwin a free black of harboring a slave. The slave is thought to be a Rutherford but old Dulcie midwife at Irongate is made to swear that Cressa a slave girl gave birth to the child. In the end it is Tobias' great-great-great granddaughter who becomes the victim to violence at the hands of runaway slaves.