The Road to Mexico

They were counted as property. They chose to become a people on the move.

Cherokee Nation, 1842.

Josiah has survived by learning the shape of danger. Ruth has survived by listening to everything the people who enslave her believe she cannot understand. Together, they have built the closest thing to safety they can give their daughter, Sarah.

Then they learn Sarah may be sold.

Their answer is a road south.

Before dawn, enslaved men, women, and children lock their enslavers inside their homes, take horses, weapons, food, medicine, and wagons, and leave Webbers Falls behind. Their destination is Mexico, a distant republic where slavery has been abolished, and another nation's claim of ownership may finally mean nothing.

But freedom lies beyond hundreds of miles of wilderness, hunger, rivers, armed patrols, and hostile territory. As other fugitives join them and pursuers close in, Ruth and Josiah must transform a desperate escape into an organized community capable of protecting children, caring for the wounded, making impossible choices, and surviving long enough to reach the border.

Inspired by the documented Cherokee Slave Revolt of 1842, The Road to Mexico brings to life one of the largest acts of collective resistance by enslaved people in Indian Territory before the Civil War.

At once an intimate family story and a sweeping novel of resistance, pursuit, and survival, The Road to Mexico asks a haunting question:

How far would you go for freedom when the law itself says you belong to someone else?