The story of Freedom’s Price Cover

N. Currier. Great fire at St. Louis, Mo.: Thursday night May 17th. , ca. 1849. New York: Published by N. Currier. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2001704273/.

I absolutely love this cover for Freedom’s Price. It is a woodcut made by Mark Summers. You might know his work from the back of the cover illustrations on Rolling Stones.

I provided the background image which is lithograph created by Nathaniel Currier. He documented the disasters of the 19th c. with his widely circulated prints (often they would be printed as an extra feature in a newspaper). Inexpensive and dramatic, his image is the defining one of the Great Fire in St. Louis in 1849. These prints were often hand-colored.

The fire started on one of the many boats docked along the Mississippi. The flames leapt from one fully laden ship to another (23 in all) before jumping to shore. Before the fire was extinguished three people were dead and 400 buildings were destroyed, almost 10% of the city.

Currier’s image shows the chaos of the scene, with residents fleeing and firefighters combatting the flames. A map of the city was included with the lithograph. In the foreground, you can see a variety of small boats.

In Freedom’s Promise, my main character, Eliza is the daughter of a slave, making her property too. It is illegal in Missouri to teach black children to read, but Eliza is being educated on a steamboat cleverly anchored in the middle of the river where state law does not apply. So when Eliza needed to escape a BAD situation, the river seemed like a logical place. She and her friend take a dinghy and row out into the river. The illustrator captured the moment perfectlly!