Introduction

"...palpable atmosphere...seat-gripping suspense scenes. Energetic and spirited storytelling make this...an entertaining read." - Kirkus Reviews

"...thrilling.... Engaging from the start, Leigh pushes the story forward with exciting force, particularly with her crisp, clean sentences that shine with vivid detail....Heartbreaking, nerve-wracking, and triumphant at times, Wake Not the Hangman is a deeply satisfying novel." - San Francisco Book Review

Thornton Guthrie works his father's land at gunpoint. The year is 1834, and men of the establishment have total control over their kin. Escaping is out of the question. Estranged from his abused mother, Thornton lives in isolation.

That changes when Thornton's father buys three slaves, William, Ronan, and Henry. Thornton loathes slavery and realizes that for the first time in fifteen years, his father--and his father's rifle--are outnumbered. Thornton dreams of joining forces with the men to plot an escape, but as the slave-owner's son, he must convince the men he is on their side while under the watchful barrel of his father's gun. He discovers he has something unexpected in common with thirty-six-year-old William and hazards a dangerous initial contact, hoping it won't cost him everything. Thornton's bravery sets in motion an audacious escape plan that, through a deadly turn of events, becomes a race against the clock further complicated by a crafty interloper on Guthrie Farms, Thornton's ill-timed first romance, and the lethal secret of one of the captives.

A tale of treachery, bondage, fellowship, and courage, Wake Not the Hangman depicts how one young man's desire to escape his wretched father leads to a much bigger quest: freedom for a band of newfound friends confined by servitude and the law. INCLUDES READER'S GUIDE.

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Excerpt

PART ONE

Fallow Ground

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—

—Edgar Allan Poe

Chapter 1

THORNTON GUTHRIE kept one eye on the Hawken rifle his father pointed at him and one eye on the black-capped chickadees that nested in the eaves of the barn. Both scared him. If he let the birds swoop in and fly away with the spring wheat seeds he had just broadcast, his father might suspect a crop-theft conspiracy between Thornton and the birds and shoot Thornton, the bigger, slower, easier target.

Marcus Guthrie had done it before, had shot his son. Thornton was seven and had milked the family cow just a half tick too slow. The animal had been ornery. Thornton had tugged on her teats far too long after sunup, and his back hurt. He sat up for a second, as he figured a fellow had a right to do, and learned he was wrong. His father’s Hawken cracked in his direction. Marcus missed the cow but took off a piece of his son’s right ear. The half circle at the top had a permanent indentation where flesh and bone had once been.

At fifteen, Thornton was mildly ashamed in front of himself to admit that up until a year before, he had rubbed the little notch every night to help himself drop off to sleep. When he had still been in the practice, he remembered each night as if it were a new thought how there hadn’t been much blood, with it being the bony part of his ear and all, but how it hurt like his father had used half his head to touch off a match and let the flame catch his hair. He remembered each night, too, that he had wailed for his mother, who walked and didn’t run, to bandage the wound.

“Get them kernels buried good and deep.”

“Yessir.”

He shifted the dirt back and forth over the seeds with a little extra elbow. He wasn’t about to get shot for some gluttonous bird, not with the Hawken or the pepperbox revolver his father kept tied to his belt with a piece of kitchen string. The revolver was mostly for shooting snakes and other varmints, but his father counted him among such creatures, and Thornton never felt as though the gun couldn’t be turned on him. It shot three bullets at a stretch. One of them was bound to hit Thornton if his father wanted it that way. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. If, like Thornton, you knew it was against the law to aid slaves in their escape, would you have acted as he did? Consider: what is moral versus what is legal. Can morality be achieved simply by virtue of obeying the law? Can breaking the law be moral? Provide examples.

2. With which character in Wake Not the Hangman do you most identify? Why?

3. When people are part of a mob (a large group of people behaving in concert to achieve one aim), they sometimes do things they would not do as individuals. Do you believe that if each person who owned a slave when slavery was legal in the United States had to be the only person who owned a slave, he or she would have been willing to own slaves? Why or why not? Include mob dynamics in your discussion, even if your position is that mob dynamics are not a factor either way.

4. Parts One, Two, and Three of Wake Not the Hangman are titled “Fallow Ground”, “Crop Rotation”, and “Harvest”, respectively. Discuss in detail how these titles relate to the story in Wake Not the Hangman.

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