Gr 6-10Martha Bartlett lives in an abolitionist household in Liberty Falls, CT. Her parents, Micah and Sarah, are agents of the Underground Railroad. When a pregnant runaway slave named Mariah gives birth and dies in their attic, they name the boy Jake and take him in while keeping his origins a secret. Martha resents Jake at first but grows to love him as her brother. Seven years later, Jake is kidnapped by two slave catchers at the behest of their employer, Robert Dawes, and taken to his plantation in Maryland after the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Martha sets out on an Underground Railroad mission to rescue him from slaverya different world that she clandestinely reads about in her father's abolitionist periodicals. A startling discovery changes the direction of her life. Alonso and Zunon have both done a masterful job bringing America's pre-Civil War years to the page. Readers will sit in suspense as Martha risks her life in the Underground Railroad network. There are mentions of famed abolitionists like Lucretia Mott, Harriet Tubman, and Lyman Ward Beecher; other figures highlight the diversity within the abolitionist movement. The mention of Native Americans does not specify tribe or tribes. The loose ends in this slave narrative leave the door open to a sequel. VERDICT Fans of Laurie Halse Anderson's "Seeds of America" series will want to pick this up.Donald Peebles, Brooklyn Public Library

The life of a Connecticut girl is turned upside down by the Fugitive Slave Act.In her debut for young readers, Alonso introduces readers to a bandaged and badly bruised 14-year-old Martha Bartlett as she reads a letter from her white abolitionist father, an Underground Railroad "station keeper," about her ailing mother, a white Quaker who helps him. Readers learn how Martha received her injuries in a flashback that begins with the arrival of her adopted brother, Jake, the infant free son of a runaway, possibly mixed-race teenager named Mariah and her slave owner, when Martha was 6. Jake's origin and what readers will likely see as autism challenge his family's love and communal concern as they all create a web of lies and other safeguards to protect him. When Martha unintentionally leaves Jake, now 7, alone, slave catchers kidnap the boy and take him back to Maryland. Martha—spurred by her own guilt, the shocking revelation about her own beginnings, and the attendant casual racism regarding her birth that romantically devastates her—decides to cross the Mason-Dixon Line to bring Jake home. Alonso pens an informative, easy-to-follow adventure story that nevertheless tackles the persistent issues arising from antebellum America, including race and skin color, situational ethics and their devastating consequences, and allyship and using privilege for justice.A tense adventure about interracial adoption that gets to the heart of what's most important: love. (author's note, maps) (Historical fiction. 12-14)

Alonso-s suspenseful tale of headstrong Martha Bartlett, daughter of abolitionists in a Connecticut town in the 1850s, explores the Underground Railroad, the lucrative kidnapping of free blacks in northern states to be slaves in the south, and questions of racial and cultural identity. The recently passed Fugitive Slave Law puts Martha-s younger brother, Jake, in potential danger: Jake was secretly born to an escaped slave, who died in childbirth in Martha-s home four years earlier. Martha-s family is raising the light-skinned and troublesome boy (he would today be identified as on the autism spectrum) as their own. In 1854, the family-s fears come true when Jake is taken; Martha, who believes it was her fault, becomes fixated on rescuing him. That she is allowed to be part of the rescue mission stretches credulity, as does her naiveté and consistent rule breaking. Adult author Alonso keeps her danger-filled plot moving, but the language is often flat and predictable (at a particularly perilous moment readers learn that -Martha-s experience with rivers was not great-). Zunon-s stark b&w drawings appear throughout. Ages 8-12. Illustrator-s agent: Lori Nowicki, Painted Words. (Nov.)