The Mapmaker's Children
Sarah McCoy, 2015
Crown Publishers
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385348904
Summary
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings.
Sarah boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children. But as the country steers toward bloody civil war, she faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.
Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.
Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 14, 1980
• Where—Fort Knox, Kentucky, USA
• Raised—Frankfurt, Germany; states of Maryland, Kansas, Virginia
• Education—B.A., Virginia Tech; M.F.A., Old Dominion University
• Currently—lives in El Paso, Texas
Sarah McCoy is an American author of bestselling novels in the U.S. and internationally.
The daughter of a career Army officer, McCoy was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky but grew up on or near military installations—in Frankfurt, Germany; Aberdeen, Maryland; Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and various cities in Virginia. She attended Virginia Tech where she received her BA in Journalism and Public Relations. She earned her MFA in English Creative Writing from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Writing
McCoy's master's degree thesis was her debut novel The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico, published by Random House in 2009. Her second novel The Baker’s Daughter, published in 2012, became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, as well as an international bestseller. Her novella The Branch of Hazel is included in the 2014 WWII anthology Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion. The Mapmaker's Children, her third novel, was released in 2015.
McCoy's writing has also appeared in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, and the Huffington Post. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Personal
McCoy and her husband, an Army orthopedic surgeon, live in El Paso, Texas. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/17/2015.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
McCoy deftly intertwines a historical tale with a modern one… lovingly constructed… passionately told.... The Mapmaker’s Children not only honors the accomplishments of a little-known woman but artfully demonstrates how fate carries us in unexpected directions, no matter how we might try to map out our lives.
Washington Post
El Paso writer Sarah McCoy mined the archives for information about Brown’s daughter Sarah, an artist who is the titular character of her latest novel, The Mapmaker’s Children. The lacing of the two plots is seamless.... [McCoy]’s unquestionably a gifted author.
Dallas Morning News
[A] journey into the past that reveals the hidden depths of the lives of two very different women separated by more than 150 years.... McCoy carefully juxtaposes the past and the present, highlighting the characters’ true introspection, and slowly revealing the unusual similarities in the two woman’s lives, which leads to a riveting conclusion.
Publishers Weekly
Interspersed with Eden [Anderson's] contemporary tale are vignettes of the life of Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown.... [An] engaging examination of dark and hopeful times in our collective national history and in our lives...[and a] rich and textured depiction of characters possessing strength and grace. —Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast
Library Journal
In vibrant yet unassuming prose, McCoy tells a story of womanhood past and present, asking big questions about family, courage and love. Readers will enjoy solving the historical puzzle of the doll's origins, but the book's true strength is its portrayal of Eden and Sarah: two brave women bound together by the difficult, noble work of building worthwhile lives.
Shelf Awareness
A fascinating peek into the personal life of the legendary John Brown and keep the pages turning. The Mapmaker’s Children serves as a reminder of how objects persist, such as Sarah’s doll, and how memories connected with those objects can last through generations.
BookPage
[S]low to begin, the women's stories are engaging and emotionally charged....and reading about the Underground Railroad and the Civil War from a woman's perspective breathes new life into a familiar era. McCoy's descriptive writing catches the reader up in both time periods.... [I]t satisfies.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Have any you ever moved into a house that had a mysterious past or an unexplained component—a trapped door, a secret closet, attic or basement that gave you the heebie-jeebies for reasons you couldn’t explain? Perhaps you found an artifact like Eden. Did you try to determine the historical significance of it? If so, what did you discover? If not, did you have a reason for leaving the past a secret?
2. Women’s roles have come a long way over the last 150 years, and yet, we still battle stereotypes of how to live and define our families. What similarities do you see in Sarah and Eden’s worlds and what major differences? How do you see yourself as compared to them and to the women of past generations in your family?
3. Were you previously familiar with the Underground Railroad, John Brown’s Secret Six Committee, the Raid on Harpers Ferry, slave quilt codes and songs, and the greater Abolitionist Movement? As a book group, discuss what elements you’d heard before and what elements you discovered after reading the novel.
4. Sarah Brown was a courageous artist of her time. Her paintings, the process of creating them, the people she aided, and the mode in which she distributed her artwork were all dangerous and unconventional for anyone, but particularly for a woman during the Civil War. In what ways do you see the arts influencing politics and challenging societal parameters today? Who are some artists that have broadened your worldview and how?
5. On page 267, Eden discusses bereavement: “Friends, neighbors, acquaintances feared it was catching like a virus, so they’d put on sterile gloves to hand out the ‘Our thoughts are with you’ when really their thoughts were sprinting away as fast as possible. It was too painful to recognize: mortality.” Do you agree or disagree with Eden? Share your personal experiences of losing a loved one, flesh and fur.
6. Do you have a pet? If so, do you consider those animals family members? What’s your pets’ name(s), your favorite memory with them, and how have they impacted your life and/or the lives of your family members?
7. Producing, corporeally and creatively, is a major theme in this novel. Does one supersede the other? Is leaving a legacy of children nobler than a legacy of art, courage, social change, or other historical fingerprints?
8. Baking and passing on recipes is another branch of the Creating Tree. How does Eden develop her maternal side through cooking? What are some of your favorite family recipes, and how have they played a role in your traditions and history?
9. Eden is furious when she finds Jack’s incoming texts from Pauline. Is omission of information lying? How would you respond to discovering texts such as these from an unknown person to your significant other?
10. Eden and Sarah discover great nurturing power in their communities. How do you see it made manifest in the 1860s New Charlestown? How do you see it in present-day New Charlestown? How do both of those compare to the broader social spheres outside their city limits?
11. Ms. Silverdash’s bookstore serves as the heartbeat of New Charlestown. The stories, fictional and real, are gathered and shared there. Do you have a favorite local bookstore or library in your community? If so, what’s your most cherished memory involving it?
12. At the conclusion of the book, how do you see Eden and Sarah creating and defining their own unique families? Do you believe there exists a social stereotype of the “perfect family”? If so, discuss the positive and negative qualities, and why you believe people have adhered to these social constructs now and 150 years ago.
(Questions issued by the publishers.)