Ellen Kushner is announcing a book launch party for Delia Sherman‘s The Freedom Maze. The party is on 22 November from 6:30 to 9:30PM at New York City’s Center for Fiction (17 East 47th Street, New York, NY 10017).
Kushner tells us it’s “technically, not my show—but I am in charge of the authentic 19th
century punch.… and I also appear in the supporting role of madly proud spouse—so listen up:
“There will be music! There will be deviled eggs and cheese straws! There will be a CocaCola Cake bakeoff! There will also be books to purchase. Or you can pre-order an e-Book (and read the *starred* Kirkus review) right now at this link.”
The book itself is a time travel novel set in 1960 and 1860. Publisher Small Beer Press describes the story: “It’s 1960, but on the decayed Fairchild sugar plantation in rural Louisiana, vestiges of a grimmer past remain—the old cottage, overgrown garden maze, relations between white and black races.
“Stuck for the summer in the family ancestral home under the thumb of her cranky, imperious grandmother, Sophie, 13, makes a reckless wish that lands her in 1860, enslaved—by her own ancestors. Sophie’s fair skin and marked resemblance to the Fairchilds earn her “easy” employment in the big house and the resentment of her peers, whose loyalty she’ll need to survive. Plantation life for whites and blacks unfolds in compelling, often excruciating detail. A departure from Sherman’s light fantasy Changeling (2006), this is a powerfully unsettling, intertextual take on historical time-travel fantasy, especially Edward Eager’s Time Garden (1958), in which white children help a grateful enslaved family to freedom. Sophie’s problems aren’t that easily resolved: While acknowledging their shared kinship, her white ancestors refuse to see her as equally human. The framing of Sophie’s adventures within 1960 social realities prompts readers to consider what has changed since 1860, what has not—for Sophie and for readers half a century later—and at what cost.”
The first chapter is available for free downloading now from this page.