In New York Times bestselling author Tracy Chevalier’s newest historical saga, she introduces Honor Bright, a modest English Quaker who moves to Ohio in 1850, only to find herself alienated and alone in a strange land. Sick from the moment she leaves England, and fleeing personal disappointment, she is forced by family tragedy to rely on strangers in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape.

Nineteenth-century America is practical, precarious, and unsentimental, and scarred by the continuing injustice of slavery. In her new home Honor discovers that principles count for little, even within a religious community meant to be committed to human equality.

However, drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network helping runaway slaves escape to freedom, Honor befriends two surprising women who embody the remarkable power of defiance. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes in, whatever the personal costs.

A powerful journey brimming with color and drama, The Last Runaway is Tracy Chevalier’s vivid engagement with an iconic part of American history.

On Saturday, Kyle will begin installing the new windows purchased for the First Day School area, Library and Kitchen. These new windows provide much better thermal insulation than the old ones, which should reduce our fossil fuel usage for heating this space. Please bear with us as we make these improvements.

Also, on Wednesday Feb 19, our new bench cushions arrived and were installed. We are working with a church in Philadelphia to see if they might be able to make use of our old cushions which are still serviceable if no one has allergies to horsehair.

Well Friends, we’ve updated our website to use WordPress rather than Drupal.  Hopefully this will allow more of you to be involved in maintaining the content on this site.  If you’d like to try it out, see me at Meeting and we’ll set you up with an account.