Call each river Jordan

Linked stories follow two half-sisters’ lineages across centuries of African and American history.

An enslaved woman’s escape reimagines the Underground Railroad as a literal train—and faces America’s brutal history.

Five Russian families move through court, love, and the Napoleonic invasion as 1805 becomes Borodino and Moscow burns. Tolstoy’s epic is Napoleonic historical fiction on a national scale—ballrooms and battlefields, Pierre and Natasha, and the question of who makes history.

A Jamaican woman narrates slavery’s last years and emancipation with wit and steel (Walter Scott Prize 2011).

A healer’s daughter navigates slavery’s end and dangerous secrets (SAH Prize 2021).

A young American nurse serves in Vietnam and struggles to be seen when she comes home.