Abigail's March

Freedom has been declared. But Abigail Carter is still enslaved.

Seventeen-year-old Abigail has spent her entire life at Ashwood Plantation, learning which rules keep her family alive-and which dreams are too dangerous to speak aloud. When Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation takes effect on January 1, 1863, it promises freedom to enslaved people across the rebellious South.

At Ashwood, nothing changes.

When the plantation's owner prepares to tear her family apart, the Carters make a desperate escape through the frozen Virginia countryside. Their journey carries them across the Rappahannock River and into Union lines, where Abigail discovers that freedom is far more complicated than a promise written on paper.

Then she sees Black soldiers marching beneath the United States flag.

The Army refuses to enlist women. Abigail refuses to accept that answer.

Disguising herself as a young man named Abel Carter, she joins the real 23rd United States Colored Troops. As the regiment marches from Camp Casey to the battlefields of Spotsylvania and Petersburg, Abigail faces brutal training, unequal pay, racism within the country she is fighting to preserve, and the constant danger that her secret will be discovered.

She once believed courage meant being fearless.

War will teach her that courage means marching while afraid.

Abigail's March is a powerful historical-fiction novel about family, freedom, identity, and the Black soldiers who helped transform the promise of emancipation into reality.