The Ever-After Bird

by Ann Rinaldi

First published 2007

Amazon

4.1(20)

After her abolitionist father is killed, sixteen-year-old CeCe McGill is placed under the authority of an uncle she barely knows. He takes her south in 1851, claiming to study birds and plantation life, but his work brings them close to enslaved people, secret routes and white Southerners prepared to punish any challenge to slavery.

CeCe begins the journey resentful and politically inexperienced. Encounters with families who can be bought, sold or separated force her to understand what her father opposed and what resistance may demand of her. The novel combines physical danger with an ethical awakening about complicity, courage and the limits of observation without action.