The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative

"Yes, this is quite a detective story—the discovery of an unpublished 19th-century manuscript, and then the historical excavation work to identify its author by more than her pen name. This is biography as active team sport! Brief background: About two decades ago, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. purchased a handwritten, unpublished manuscript titled The Bondswoman’s Narrative at an auction. He authenticated the gathered pages, handwritten in the 1850s by a woman using the name Hannah Crafts. Thought to be the earliest novel by a Black, it was a harrowing saga describing the cruel abuse the protagonist endured before escaping to freedom. In detailing these horrors of her daily life, the author left clues to her true identity. Furman University professor Hecimovich worked with the tools of a gumshoe, the sensibilities of a literary scholar, the nuanced perspective of a historian, and the congeniality of a tour guide as he shared with readers his search through public records, handwritten diaries and almanacs, wills, and slave inventories. He finally revealed the writer to be Hannah Bond, who had learned to read and write as an enslaved house servant in North Carolina before escaping to the North."