However, she does get to experience some of the dehumanizing and humiliating aspects of slavery, and grows a lot over the time she spends in the past, beginning to question many of her assumptions about her place in the world, and how people different from her should be treated. This family of slave owners isn't as horrible as some I've read about, and this is a YA book, so Sophie's time as a slave was less terrible than I expected it to be. The bulk of this story is Sophie's experiences on the plantation. Sophie has had very little contact with any African Americans over her thirteen years, except for her mother's housekeeper, and doesn't really understand any of her family's past as plantation owners. Sophie is seen as the mixed race offspring of the brother of the owner, and is taken on as a house slave. She eventually encounters a strange creature, who ends up propelling Sophie into the past on the plantation. Sophie is left to her own devices after her mother leaves, and wanders the property, reading and exploring. It's the summer of 1960, and Sophie's mother is planning on sending Sophie to Catholic private school in the fall to avoid having to send her girl to a desegregated public school.

Sophie's mother is angry, thanks to a fairly recent divorce, while Sophie seems to have more ambivalent feelings about her father's leaving. Sophie's feeling resentful and frustrated about having to spend the summer in the country her mother is leaving her there with her aunt so her mother can get a job as a CPA. This was my first book by Delia Sherman, and it was a very pleasant surprise to find out that this audio version was narrated by Robin Miles, whose lovely voice I'd recently heard narrating two other books: Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race and Another Brooklyn.)Ībout The Freedom Maze: Sophie is thirteen years old and on her way to the family's country property (former plantation) outside New Orleans.

The freedom maze by delia sherman