Flight to Ohio ― From Slavery to Passing to Freedom

FLIGHT TO OHIO: FROM SLAVERY TO PASSING TO FREEDOM “Flight to Ohio” begins in 1836, as 21-year-old Tom and his mother Nellie escape slavery on a Virginia plantation. They soon discover that Tom, the bastard son of the white master, passes as white when he is not seen with his mother. Tom must make a choice as to how to live. The stakes are raised when he courts and marries 18-year-old Sarah Long, a young white woman from a respected local farm family. What is lost when identity is concealed? What price is paid? Tom's emotional story unfolds against the backdrop of the Cincinnati race riots of 1836 and 1841 and the oncoming Civil War. In a place and time beset with racism, hate, jealousy and violence, the novel's characters forge deep evolving loves, friendships, and loyalties as they move towards freedom, their ultimate goal. This is the author's imagined story of her own maternal ancestry.

Mary Anderson Parks worked for twenty-two years as an attorney representing the foster care/adoption agencies of the Puyallup Indian Nation, the Seattle Indian Center, and United Indians of All Tribes Foundation. She is the author of two previous novels, They Called Me Bunny, Livingston Press, University of West Alabama (2006), and The Circle Leads Home, University Press of Colorado (1998). Her husband, a space physicist, is of Korean and Chinese ancestry. They had two daughters and live in Berkeley with their surviving daughter and her husband, a rock musician, and two granddaughters, 10 and 15. Grandson Zach, 24, lives in Boston. Mary was born in Ohio, grew up in San Francisco.