Trouble Don't Last
By Shelley Pearsall
Knopf, $14.95
ISBN 0375814906

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Bringing the past to life

Only the most enthusiastic of historians would be willing to wade through letters and diaries and personal accounts to get a true grasp of what life was like in a previous era. Thank goodness for writers like Shelley Pearsall. Her new novel Trouble Don't Last deals with a facet of American history that at best gets a couple of paragraphs in the average 6th grader's history book -- the Underground Railroad. In telling the story of Samuel, an 11-year-old slave on a Kentucky plantation, and the harrowing adventure he undertakes by running off for Canada with an old slave named Harrison, Pearsall brings history to life in a way that only an eyewitness -- or a historian -- could do.

Aimed at the age group that Samuel personifies, Trouble puts the reader squarely in the shoes of a peer and subtly asks the question, what would you do in a similar situation? Pearsall pulls no punches; young readers will know early on that Samuel's life is at stake, from the scarred face of a former slave to the boy's recollection of the heartless way his master's son deliberately burned him. Samuel isn't some Disney character. He's ignorant and scared and wet and cold, and it's all Harrison can do to pull him along at first. At the same time, he's curious, and he listens. As the story progresses, he begins to see things Harrison misses, things that take on life-or-death importance at the book's climax.

Many stories about the Underground Railroad deal only with the people who ran the loose amalgam of safe houses and wagon trips to get slaves to freedom, and certainly these brave people should be celebrated. But it's refreshing to read about those the Railroad helped -- the slaves themselves. Their system of escape lacked organization, and there were many instances in which things could and did go wrong. It was often up to the slaves to facilitate their own flights to freedom. This comes through loud and clear in Trouble Don't Last. The experiences of Samuel and Harrison in their quest for liberty are neither fun nor easy. But they will leave one thing that lasts: an impression on a young reader.