Apex Review Of Wake Not The Hangman (Deborah Leigh)

Jan. 13, 2016 - PRLog -- Wake Not The Hangman

Deborah Leigh

Darrow Publishing

ISBN: 9780692447680

Reviewed By Laura Hu

Official Apex Reviews Rating:   4 Stars

Wake Not The Hangman, by Deborah Leigh, chronicles a tale of escape and true love amidst the danger of being caught and hanged for helping slaves run away.

Thornton Guthrie’s life changes when Hezzy Jones, a slave owner of over twenty slaves walks onto the Guthrie farm and sells Marcus Guthrie, his abusive trigger happy father, his three slaves: William, Henry, and Ronan. Thornton develops a close friendship with William, a literate slave, and often slips him books to read. Later on, the two of them plot to escape the Guthrie farm along with his mother, Henry, and Ronan. With the help of Hiram Elliot, a strong abolitionist, they free all the slaves on Jones’ property. Upon killing Marcus Guthrie out of self-defense when his father tries to kill him, William, and his mother, Thornton and the rest of the newly freed slaves decide to flee to freedom while he attempts to outrun the law and hanging as a consequence for aiding the abolitionist cause. Nevertheless, in the end of the novel the law catches up to him despite the fact that the slaves have escaped when he is sent to the gallows.

Wake Not the Hangman is a fast-paced read with a lot of action and an easy to follow plot line. However, its portrayals of violence often interspersed between chapters describing the abuse that Rose Guthrie is subjugated to at the hands of her husband, Marcus Guthrie, takes some attention away from the narrative and presents a stark juxtaposition in tone from the rest of the story.