Rhoda of the Underground
1909
A young woman's courage is tested when love and morality collide in pre-Civil War America. Rhoda Ware grew up in the comfortable shadow of her father's abolitionist conviction, but nothing prepared her for the moment she must choose between the man she loves and the enslaved people desperate for freedom. When a fugitive slave appears at her door, Rhoda faces an impossible truth: the charming Jefferson Delavan who has captured her heart owns human beings. This is not a gentle story of awakening. It is a wrenching confrontation with the gap between what America claims to be and what it does. Florence Finch Kelly writes with unflinching clarity about the price of moral courage, the complexity of love tangled with injustice, and the way courage often means choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. The novel endures because it asks the question every generation must answer: what will you do when innocence meets complicity?
