The Vanishing Woman

Name: The Vanishing Woman
Rating: 4.56 (1778 reviews)

by Doug Peterson Book 1 in the North-South Series series.

First published 2012

Amazon

4.6(1,778)

Ellen Craft disguises herself as a sickly white male planter and travels openly from Georgia with her husband William posing as the enslaved servant of his supposed master. Trains, steamers, hotels and ticket offices become sites of danger as officials question Ellen’s inability to sign documents and strangers scrutinise the couple’s carefully rehearsed roles.

Their escape reaches the North, but the Fugitive Slave Act and slave catchers prevent safety from being permanent. The novel reconstructs the Crafts’ documented journey as a story of marriage, faith and performance, showing how slavery’s racial and gender assumptions could be manipulated while never minimising the consequences of discovery.