Changes

|title=The Last Runaway

|sort=Last Runaway, The

|publisher=Harper

|date=August 2013

|website=http://www.tchevalier.com/

|summary=A Quaker girl from Dorset seeks a new life in America, but her experiences with the Underground Railroad change her world in ways she never imagined.

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Quaker girl Honor Bright is seeking escape from a failed relationship. Leaving quiet Dorset for America, a developing country about which she knows little, she hopes that accompanying her sister to the US will mean a new start within the American Quaker community. But Honor soon discovers the differences between America and England – not just in terms of weather and landscape, but also in the American culture of slave keeping.

The most striking characters were Belle the milliner, and her brother Donovan who, working as a slave catcher, was bound to have a lot of dramatic appeal. I would have liked to have known more about him and seen him in settings other than the limited ones shown. Honor, while starting off promisingly, became quite dull and while I could see the dilemmas she was facing, I began to lose interest in how she would resolve them. I tried re-reading certain sections but it didn’t make me feel any differently. My overall feeling was that the book was wrongly balanced; too much attention was paid to subtleties and too little to major sections of storyline. Ultimately, it was a disappointing end to a book that began very well.

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