Meet the Author- Allegra DiBonaventura

Join us on Sunday, April 28th at 2pm in the Community Room to meet author Allegra di Bonaventura. 



She will be speaking and signing copies of her new book.
 For Adam’s Sake:
A Family Saga in Colonial New England 


In the tradition of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s classic book, “A
Midwife’s Tale”, comes this groundbreaking narrative by one of America’s
most promising colonial historians. Joshua Hempstead was a
well-respected farmer and tradesman in New London, CT. As his remarkable
diary-kept from 1711 to 1758– reveals, he was also a slave owner who
owned Adam Jackson for over thirty years.  In this engrossing narrative
of family life and the slave experience in the colonial North, Allegra
di Bonaventura describes the complexity of this master/slave
relationship and traces the intertwining stories of two families until
the eve of the Revolution. Slavery is often left out of our collective
memory of New England’s history, but it was hugely impactful on the
central unit of colonial life: the family. In every corner, the lines
between slavery and freedom were blurred as families across the social
spectrum fought to survive. In this enlightening study, a new portrait
of the era emerges.