Song yet sung - James McBride

'On a grey morning in March 1850, a colored slave named Liz Spocott dreamed of the future. And it was not pleasant.'

In the tense days before the American Civil War, in the swamplands of the Maryland shore, a wounded slave girl and her visions tear a community apart in a riveting drama of hope and redemption.

Liz Spocott is a captured slave. Shot and near death, she is shackled to other runaways in the attic of the notorious slave-catcher Patty Cannon. Liz is bound to  an ancient, nameless woman who reveals the Code, a fiercely guarded, cryptic means of communication for slaves on the run. When Liz escapes once again, Denwood Long, a troubled slave-catcher and waterman, is coaxed out of retirement to break the Code and track down Liz.

Kidnapping, gunfights, and chases ensue in this extraordinary story of tragic triumph, and unexpected kindness.