Two eleven-year-old friends, Jason and Chazz, are yanked out of their present-day lives and into the nineteenth century by the pleas of a ghost. The troubled spirit turns out to be a boy their age, Jem, a runaway slave from Tennessee. Jem traveled the Underground Railroad, Jason and Chazz discover, only to meet a cruel death in a “safe” house in Buffalo—the very house, it turns out, where Jason lives in the twenty-first century.
Good-hearted and plucky Jason and Chazz readily decide to help Jem complete his quest for freedom, but they have a lot to learn about the harsh realities of pre-bellum slavery. At every turn along the journey lurk slave-hunters determined to capture Jem and claim the reward for his return. And the two friends are not prepared for the discomforts and dangers they will face, from extreme pizza-deprivation to the chilling possibility that they will end up stuck in the year 1852.
Betsy Sterman, coauthor with Sam Sterman of the award-winning middle-grade novels Too Much Magic and Backyard Dragon, takes kids on a page-turning adventure in Ghost Road. Along the way, readers will learn about an important span of American history. They will also learn, through young Jem, that freedom is hard-won and precious.
Ghost Road is available online at Amazon.com.
Good-hearted and plucky Jason and Chazz readily decide to help Jem complete his quest for freedom, but they have a lot to learn about the harsh realities of pre-bellum slavery. At every turn along the journey lurk slave-hunters determined to capture Jem and claim the reward for his return. And the two friends are not prepared for the discomforts and dangers they will face, from extreme pizza-deprivation to the chilling possibility that they will end up stuck in the year 1852.
Betsy Sterman, coauthor with Sam Sterman of the award-winning middle-grade novels Too Much Magic and Backyard Dragon, takes kids on a page-turning adventure in Ghost Road. Along the way, readers will learn about an important span of American history. They will also learn, through young Jem, that freedom is hard-won and precious.
Ghost Road is available online at Amazon.com.