100 books like Chains

Set in Boston at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Johnny Tremain tells of a young silver-smith apprentice whose pride leads to disaster. His hand is crippled and he can no longer pursue his dream. His courage and desire to improve his life make him memorable; I still recall Johnny’s passion years after reading the novel. Eventually Johnny’s hand is healed by a surgeon and he joins the patriots. 

Johnny Tremain presents a brave character living in challenging and divisive times. Johnny Tremain brings to life conflicts with British rule and the determination of those on both sides of the struggle.

I’ve included the Colliers’ classic because it was one of the first historical fiction novels that I ever read.  Over forty years later, I can still remember the magic. Upon reading the first page, I was transported instantly from my desert home in Las Vegas to a Tory tavern in Redding, Connecticut. The enchantment in the pages worked a magic over me that I never forgot  In some ways, this led me to write my own historical fiction novel. The title is simple – My Brother Sam is Dead. The meaning, the message, and the Meeker Family’s pain profound. You will not soon forget the Meeker family’s terrible misfortunes and the unimaginable unfairness of war. In the end, you will question all wars... even our very war for independence.  

I love to find “hidden gems” in history. Ona Judge is a gem. First published in 2017, Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge is a biography that reads like an engaging novel. It depicts the life of George and Martha Washington’s young enslaved girl that grows to a young woman in the shadows of the most powerful couple in our new nation. At age 16, Ona leaves Mount Vernon to accompany President Washington and Martha while they live in New York and then Philadelphia. She is treated splendidly, but she is still property. This terrible truth crashes upon Ona when Martha, wanting to give the absolute best gift she can to her difficult, disagreeable, and stubborn granddaughter, decides to give her Ona – her most cherished possession, as a wedding gift. Rather than be property to be gifted and given, Ona escapes. This book shows how President… show more.

Paul Revere’s name is famous, but I loved how this book made his home life real. Sarah, the middle child in a large family, reflects the whispering, the suspicions, and the taking sides among their friends as the British take over Boston. Sarah fears for her father when he begins to ride to warn nearby towns; now he’s a marked man. More than the history, Sarah’s regret at waiting too long to make up with a dear friend warns modern readers to learn from her.

This book made me want to dedicate my life to studying the American Revolution.

Alfred F. Young tells the story of George Robert Twelves Hewes, a poor, diminutive shoemaker who was at the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. He also touched off a riot that led to a man being tarred and feathered. Hewes spent his whole life as a poor man, but he briefly became a celebrity in his old age. Young uses this fleeting moment of fame to explore how Americans sanitized and distorted the memory of the American Revolution.

This book inspired me to study the American Revolution in the cities, and the forgotten, sometimes violent ways that radicals pushed for greater equality.

This book opened my eyes to indigenous Americans’ experience of the Revolutionary War. Heavy on detail, it’s not for the faint of heart. Each chapter focuses on one North American community at a time, from various spots on the map, and shows the many different ways that Native people responded to the upheavals of the American Revolution.

Calloway went on to write several other great books, and other authors have since expanded our understanding of Native peoples’ history, but this was my first, and it’s a great place to start. 

I went into this book cold, knowing nothing about it beforehand, and it left a powerful, thrilling impression. I almost don’t want to say anything else about it so that other readers can experience the same suspense.

Readers might know Anderson from Feed or his other quirky genre-bending books. This book, the first of two volumes, is a work of historical fiction set mostly in Boston. It uses eighteenth-century language to tell an epic tale about the American Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the dark side of both.

It’s a book of horror (perhaps even anticipating the movie Get Out), with intricate details that will delight a certain kind of reader.

I’ve been assigning this book to students for a few years now, introducing them to the ways that Americans dueled with one another over slaveholding and Black citizenship.

In 1779, British privateers attacked a few South Carolina plantations and took thirty-four enslaved people away (or maybe they went willingly in search of freedom). After a series of adventures, the men and women arrived in Revolutionary Massachusetts, and their enslavers wanted them back. The resulting dispute foreshadowed the debate over slavery that hides in the heart of the United States Constitution.

Because it’s not too long, I think this book is a great way to introduce students to slavery in the North and South. Blanck shows how Black people pushed back against the compromises that tried to box them in.

Laurie Halse Anderson masterfully helps us see the dilemmas of those who endured the Revolutionary years, from a young runaway slave to soldiers at General Washington’s winter camp at Valley Forge. For younger readers, Forge gives the experience of surviving the bitter cold and hunger of the winter camp for both the fearful runaway slave, Curzon, posing as a freedman and soldier in Washington’s army, and his friend Isabel. You can feel the cold seeping into your rag-bound feet and taste the sand in your rock-baked flatbread, hunger pangs tormenting you as you read.

The stars had to align perfectly for this autobiography to have been written. Born into slavery in the American South, Elizabeth Keckley learned to read and write at a time when laws forbade it. Her skills as a seamstress allowed her to buy her freedom and later become Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker. She also became a close confidant of the First Lady, gaining an unfiltered view of life in the White House during one of the most crucial times in our nation’s history. After Lincoln’s assassination, Keckley published this autobiography and was widely criticized for relaying intimate conversations and private moments she shared with the Lincoln family. In addition, Keckley’s unflinching account of slavery was difficult for many to read. However, this book has endured as one of the best accounts of life as a slave and of the Lincolns’ time in the White House.