All We Were Promised (Ballentine Books 2024) by Ashton Lattimore is a literary historical novel set in 1837 in which the author accomplishes exactly what an excellent historical novel should—that is, she blends well-researched, accurate historical facts into a fictional plot to create a fascinating, eminently readable, and suspenseful story. Readers will learn true history from this book, and they will be entertained in the process with this crisply written, gripping story.
The protagonists, three Black women from different backgrounds and situations, are fully developed, rich characters who are drawn together in the tense, often dangerous Philadelphia abolitionist movement in 1838. Though they all have similar goals—the end of slavery and personal freedom—their approaches and individual situations often put them at odds with each other and their families. Mingled throughout the novel, actual historical figures such as Robert Purvis, Lucretia Mott, Hetty Reckless, William Lloyd Garrison, and Angelina Grimke appear, used fictionally but in ways that are consistent with their real-life roles. There are no dull lectures anywhere in the book, yet much accurate information is conveyed within the story lines regarding the abolitionist movement in that time frame and place. The emotions, tensions, conflicts, and danger facing the three women are firmly rooted within actual history. While most of the story takes place in Philadelphia, the back stories of two of the main characters are set in the South and the main antagonist—a loathsome, self-centered widow on a deceptive campaign to marry well—is from the South.
With a recurring theme that “[s]ometimes doing the right thing is more important than doing what’s safest,” the author raises important questions that resonate today in our divisive society. Issues of class struggle, women’s rights, and civil rights of Blacks, which are important elements in this novel, resound to this good day. Yet, the author manages to avoid becoming preachy, overly didactic, or strident in conveying such issues within the story.
The three young women at the center of the story bring their contrasting experiences as Black women in 1838 into the novel. Charlotte is an escaped slave living as a freed woman in Philadelphia. She is protected by her father, also an escaped slave, but one who passes as white. Though she appears safe, Charlotte lives with the fear of being caught and returned to slavery and she yearns to be more than a maid in her father’s house. Nell is a free-born Black, living with her upper-class family, and sheltered by the wealth of her parents. As part of the city’s monied Black elite, she is often unaware of what other Black women deal with on a day-to-day basis—but she will learn as the story developed. Evie is an enslaved young woman visiting in Philadelphia with her callous mistress and desperate to escape before being sent back to the Carolinas, where her future would be grim. Uneducated, but bright and determined, Evie’s quest for freedom soon pulls Charlotte and Nell into acute danger when their paths cross.
In the novel, the women and others in their abolitionist circles and in the city’s Female Antislavery Society, wrestle with questions of what to do, how to do it, and how much risk to personally take upon themselves. Nell’s antislavery group, which includes Black and White women, hold long meetings heavy on procedure but light on direct action, though they regularly draft antislavery statements, circulate such statements around town for signatures, and ship them off to Congress, where they are routinely ignored. Speaking through her characters, the author illustrates the limited political actions allowed women in those days when females could not vote and were largely excluded from political activities and public forums. When Charlotte joins the antislavery group as Nell’s friend, she shakes things up given her own recent experiences as a slave and her demand that the group do something to help actual slaves escape. In advocating for direct action, she riles some of the elite women in the group. Cautiously, Charlotte also keeps her own past as a slave well hidden from everyone—even her friend Nell—and this will have some damning repercussions.
Nell longs to do more, yet she is confined by her more conservative parents, who donate generously to Black causes, but prefer not to be involved in risky activities. As Nell tartly tells her mother and father, there are limits to what one can do by tossing money at people. Yet in Nell’s group of abolitionist women—both White and Black—few take direct action. Charlotte’s challenge to them asking them what they have done to actually help an enslaved person brings about concerns and risks her expulsion from the group. Yet at least one other woman in the organization, a former slave herself, Hetty Reckless (a true historical person used fictionally in the book) is ready and willing to step up and help. Hetty individually responds to Charlotte’s demands that the group take direct action and is soon linking Charlotte and Nell with others who help slaves with direct intervention. As plans to help Evie escape are thwarted more than once, the danger to all involved escalates.
Time is running out for Evie as the intricate plot soon points out the six-month compromise in the laws in Pennsylvania. Though technically a free state, when slaves visited Pennsylvania with their owners, they were not automatically freed but only after six months of living there are they entitled to claim they are free. This allows slave owners to vacation and do business in the state while continuing to own their slaves. Slave owners quickly learned to send their slaves back south before six months expired and then bring them back again. Thus, Evie has a narrow window of six months in which to escape before being sent South again. When Charlotte and Nell commit to helping her escape, they know their timeline is tight and that any failure could send them all into slavery in the Deep South.
Between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Philadelphia was home to the largest and arguable most politically active free Black communities in the northern United States, a fact author discusses in her “Author’s Note.” Yet as illustrated by the actions in the plot, Blacks could do very little in the city in that era without risking retribution from White Philadelphia in reprisal. Or as one character realized, Black people in the city hardly had to do anything at all to stir up White folks’ anger. Using established historical facts such as the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall, which was burned within days of its opening, and the agitation to end free Black men’s right to vote, the author does an admirable job of illustrating the precarious balance between personal safety and activism facing Blacks. Within the framework of fiction, the merciless beating of a Black journalist, the kidnapping of free Blacks with an intent to return them South into slavery, the burning down of a business, and the arrest of an abolitionist are all effectively used to show how even free Blacks faced constant danger in a so-called free city.
This is an important book, one that raises vital questions that are significant to this day. It is also a suspenseful novel, with compelling characters and a page-turning quality. But what makes it such a stellar historical novel is how adeptly and accurately the real fact-based history of a place and time are conveyed through the experiences of its three main characters.
Ashton Lattimore
The author, Ashton Lattimore, is a former lawyer, turned award-winning journalist and author. Though All We Were Promised is her debut novel, she has extensive nonfiction publications and is the editor-in-chief at Prism, a nonprofit news outlet by and for communities of color. Her nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, Slate, CNN, and Essence. A graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Columbia Journalism School, Lattimore grew up in New Jersey, and now lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband and their two sons.
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