All We Were Promised, a debut novel by Aston Lattimore, gives a different historical perspective on Philadelphia history. The book involves three young Black women in quite disparate levels of society. The main character, Charlotte, was named Carrie as a child and grew up in the antebellum South. An escaped slave, she works as a maid in a nice home in Society Hill but feels as inhibited—if not as mistreated—as she’d been as a slave. Her father, Jack, forced her to escape with him to Philadelphia just before Carrie is to be sold off to help their owner pay off debts. The second character, Nell, is a member of the Black upper middle class and has never done a day’s work in her life. A budding abolitionist, she befriends Carrie/Charlotte. Part way through the story, the third girl emerges when Evie, a fellow slave and friend of Charlotte’s, arrives in Philadelphia and by chance encounters Charlotte at a local market. Evie begs Charlotte to help her escape as well, and the three girls begin planning.

Lattimore does a great job blending her fictional characters with real historical personages. As a former fifteen-year resident of Philadelphia, the setting felt authentic. All We Were Promised vividly shows the plight of Blacks in what was one of the more progressive cities in American in the 1830s. Despite its progressiveness, Philadelphia was gradually eroding the rights of Blacks by decreasing how much their votes counted in elections, etc. The “sojourner” laws allowed slaves to continue to be enslaved as long as they were not within the city more than six months. After that, they would be deemed free. Blacks could still be randomly picked up off the streets, even if free, and returned to the south. Race riots were common as the country was in an economic downturn, and Whites felt Blacks were taking away jobs. The climax shows how very real the dangers Blacks faced in the City of Brotherly Love and the birthplace of American Liberty. 

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All We Were Promised (Ballantine Books , April 2, 2024) is available through:

Amazon    |    Barnes & Noble

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