Seminole Freedom

$11.95* Seminole Freedom is a 225-page adult novel based on true historical events.

It is August, 1815. Eleven-year-old Jenny Moses and her mother, Annie, work as field slaves on a southern Alabama plantation. When they learn of their master's plans to sell Jenny and separate mother and daughter, they choose to run. During a perilous week-long journey, they are helped by Cato, another young runaway, and together they travel to the banks of Florida's Apalachicola River. There they find friendly settlements of escaped slaves, free blacks and Native Americans. With the aid of an abandoned but fully fortified British fort, Jenny, Annie, Cato and a new friend - Crazy Bear - are swept up in the hope that a new country of blacks and Indians, one in which everyone is free, can be carved out of this strange new land. In the meantime, there are slave hunters to contend with, such as the cruel Rube, and armies bent on destroying their dreams.

Seminole Freedom is a 225-page adult novel based on true historical events. Following the life of Jenny as she grows into womanhood and endures the long and bitter Seminole wars, this tale of hardship, bravery and freedom explores the little known role of Black Seminoles in the shaping of American history.

What Others Are Saying

“The message is the beautiful teaching of what I experienced with my loved one, Bear Heart, that faith in the goodness of our Creator will prevail only if WE keep the faith. I found this book important for me because it highlights a challenging period in our country’s history, one that displays man’s inhumanity towards all living things, including, at times, ourselves.”                            

Reginah WaterSpirit, wife and medicine helper of the late Muskogee spiritual leader Marcellus “Bear Heart” Williams

“Doug Alderson has walked across America, paddled around Florida’s coastal edges and down one of its historic rivers, The Kissimmee, photographing as he goes, and he has sat on the soggy ground with enthralled children, to spin stories they beg him to tell again and again. Along the way he has written several excellent non-fiction guides to our world, most recently the University Press of Florida book, FLORIDA'S ENDANGERED WILDLIFE. Many of his fans, myself included, have wondered what sort of fiction his pen might produce.

“SEMINOLE FREEDOM is a fast-paced first-novel from Alderson, limning a less-covered aspect of history - the alliance between black Southerners enslaved on plantations, and their Seminole Indian hosts in North Florida villages, who shared food and shelter in a unique cultural alliance, after dramatic dashes for freedom by often-injured slaves. 

“SEMINOLE FREEDOM is an intriguing cross-cultural celebration of family love, involving mother and daughter and daughter and husband, set against the backdrop of  Creeks-becoming Seminole, into the farthest exotic patch of southeast mainland."         

Jan Godown Annino, author of She Sang Promise (National Geographic Books), the story of Betty Mae Jumper, the first elected woman leader of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

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*Add $3.00 per book for shipping. Florida residents add 7% tax.