Modern Medea

One frigid Sunday night in January 1856, a twenty-two-year-old Kentucky slave named Margaret Garner gathered up her family and raced north, toward freedom. Soon, however, the Garners were discovered in their sanctuary, and Margaret turned on her children with a knife rather than see them sent back to a life of slavery. Steven Weisenburger is the first scholar to delve into the astonishing story of Margaret Garner's child-murder in more than a century. His dramatic narrative paints a nuanced portrait of the not-so-genteel Southern culture that perpetuated slavery and had such destructive effects on all who lived with it and in it.