Peach Connection

McBride made a place for himself in American literature with The Color of Water, a memoir about his white mother raising 12 mixed-race children in Harlem. 

His latest novel, set in 1850, tells the story of an escaped slave on the run from two relentless slave catchers. On her journey through the eastern Maryland shore, Liz, learns pieces of a cryptic Code that is used among slaves to help guide each other to freedom.

She begins to crack and utilize the Code to help herself and others along the Underground Railroad, but is simultaneously being tormented by dreams that forebode a future where Blacks are free in body, but bound in spirit by societal structure and self-deprecating choices. "Ain't no freedom" in that kind of future she says of her visions, which are an apparent commentary on the state of Black American culture today. Ultimately, her journey helps her discover the missing piece of the Code, the song yet sung, and comes to a stunning conclusion.