The Last Runaway

The stunning new novel from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Set in the sunlit cornfields of rural Ohio, during the last days of slavery, Tracy Chevalier’s new novel is a beautiful and warm-hearted tale of courage, community and female friendship.

England, 1850. Honor and Grace Bright, sisters brought up in the Quaker community of Bridport, Dorset, are moving to a village in Ohio to join Grace’s husband and start a new life in America. Honor’s most sacred possession is the signature quilt she takes with her, a gift stitched by friends before she left - her patchwork memory of home.

Tragedy strikes and Honor is forced to continue the journey to Faithwell, Ohio alone.

On arrival in America and with no choice but to stay, Honor builds a new life for herself, relying on the compassion of strangers while finding steady comfort in her quilt-making. As she learns more about the place that is to be her new home she discovers that Ohio is the land of runaways: slaves who are escaping the south and running north to freedom. She finds her principles tested to the limit when a runaway slave appears at the farm of her new family.