Robert Hilliard’s first historical novel, In Freedom’s Shadow, is one of those gripping, fast-paced stories that quite literally leaves you breathless in the opening sentence and holds you on for the duration until the very end.
Hilliard, a western Pennsylvania native, wrote his first book, A Season on the Allegheny, 12 years ago to national acclaim for his superb chronicling of a year spent hunting in the Allegheny National Forest. His adventures tracking deer, grouse, and turkey immersed the reader into the majesty of Pennsylvania’s only national forest and served as a perfect primer to immersing the reader into the life of John Scobell, a slave during the Civil War who found a way to flee the Confederacy only then to make the fateful decision to return to the South as a spy for the Union.
The novel is painstakingly researched and masterly unfolds the enthralling account of Scobell, who first risks his life to flee from life as a slave and then, after experiencing the wings of freedom, decides to enter the perilous world of espionage to spy on the Confederate States to further the cause of the Union.
Hilliard recreates through exhaustive research but also taut prose to tell Scobell’s story as he dodges spy hunters’ capture as he wrestles with the clarity it requires to maintain the difficulties of pretending to be one person while being morally moored as someone completely different.
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The accuracy of this work of fiction makes the reader completely forget it is fiction, and Hilliard has done a masterful job of telling a story in the American canon that has rarely seen the light of day; he also allows each character to form their own unique attitudes, demons, and personalities that really accurately reflect the era in which it happened.
Little has been written about men such as Scobell, and this is a detailed, often emotional introduction to the men and women of color who had the courage and wherewithal to risk everything to make America whole, understanding that while it would lead to their emancipation, it would also lead to what America was designed to be.