The Letter Writer

by Ann Rinaldi

First published 2008

Amazon

3.8(33)

Eleven-year-old Harriet Whitehead earns attention by reading and writing letters for people around her Virginia community. She does not fully understand how information about roads, households and movements may be used until Nat Turner’s uprising transforms ordinary correspondence into evidence of danger and betrayal.

The novel makes literacy both gift and risk within a slave society that polices Black communication and depends on white children remaining ignorant of its violence. Harriet must confront the consequences of acting without understanding and the impossibility of remaining innocent once repression and retaliation begin.