On Wednesday evening, Aug. 22, I’ll be at The Book Cellar, Chicago’s premium indie North Side book store, to talk about FIVE FOR FREEDOM and the five African Americans in John Brown’s Army, treated as footnotes if at all and for far too long overshadowed by their towering, martyred leader.

My book tells the whole story, for the first time, of these five brave men who dedicated and in the case of four gave their lives to the abolitionist cause.  Only one, Osborne Perry Anderson, survived to write the only insider account of the ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. It was a futile attempt to foment a slave insurrection. Instead, it lit the spark that led to the American Civil War.

FIVE FOR FREEDOM is the story of the five men, the world into which they were born and raised, their families, their lives and deaths, and their lasting legacies down through the generations right up until today.  It is a story from the past that resonates in the present.  It is a story still without an ending.