DeCaro, Louis A., Fire in the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown, New York University Press, 2005.

To understand the militant abolitionism of Grandfather Ames, readers may enjoy this biography of the great abolitionist John Brown. This study places Brown in his nineteenth-century social and religious context and explains his brand of Puritanism. DeCaro portrays John Brown as a Protestant saint, a man ahead of his time, seeking to fulfill divine providence by acting on his radical faith.

Frost, Karolyn Smardz, I've Got a Home in Glory Land: The True Story of Two Runaway Slaves Whose Flight to Freedom Changed History, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006.

This book tells the true story of slave couple Lucie and Thornton Blackburn and their 1831 escape from Louisville, Kentucky, to Canada. Efforts were made to have them extradited to the United States, but the Blackburns made it to...