Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad Betty De Ramus ISBN: 0743482646 Format: Paperback, 288pp Pub. Date: January 2006 Publisher: Atria Books BBP Sales Rank: 97,283 List Price: $14.00
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FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Forbidden fruit is a collection of fascinating, largely untold stories of
ordinary men and women who took extraordinary measures, risking life and limb
to be together. It's the story of couples who faced mobs, bloodhounds, bounty
hunters, and bullets to defy the system that allowed slave masters to breed
and sell people like cattle. Some broke the taboo against interracial
marriage, putting their lives in the most severe peril." "In one story, a
Georgia couple who fled slavery wearing multiple disguises sailed for England
with bounty hunters and federal troops on their trail. A fugitive slave from
Virginia spent seventeen arduous years searching for his wife. A Missouri
slave fell in love with his white Mormon neighbor and escaped to Canada to be
with her, putting pepper in his shoes to throw dogs off the scent at night
and hiding in trees by day." Betty DeRamus gleaned these stories from
descendants of runaway slave couples, unpublished memoirs, Civil War records,
books, magazines, and dozens of previously untapped sources. Beautifully and
compassionately written, this important book reveals a chapter of American
history that is shameful but is about triumph as well as torture, achievement
as well as degradation, and indomitable love as well as hate.