Promised to the Dead
When Jesse went down to the marsh on that fateful day, he expected to find a turtle for terrapin soup. Instead, he comes across a dying slave woman who makes Jesse promise he’ll take her young son, Perry, to a relative in Baltimore. Aiding and abetting a slave is against the law, and it also goes against everything Jesse has been taught to believe. But he can’t break a promise to the dead, and, more important, he has to follow what he knows in his heart to be right. The journey is more treacherous than Jesse ever imagined. At the crossroads of a country about to plunge into civil war, danger lurks around every corner. Will these boys on the run ever find a safe haven?
Mary Downing Hahn
Mary Downing Hahn (born 1937) is an award winning American author of young adult novels. After graduating college, she worked as an art teacher, a college instructor, and a children's librarian in Prince George's Public Library System. She published her first novel, The Sara Summer, at the age of 41. Since then, she has been a full-time writer. Her ghost story Wait till Helen Comes was the winner of 12 state children's book awards and she received the Scott O'Dell award for her World War II novel Stepping on the Cracks. She currently lives in Columbia, Maryland. (Bowker Author Biography).

