The River Jordan: A True Story of the Underground Railroad [Paperback]

Henry Robert Burke (Author), Dick Croy (Author), Charles Fogle (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2001

THE RIVER JORDAN is the fictionalized account of an actual escape on the Underground Railroad of a slave and her seven children from a western Virginia tobacco plantation on the Ohio River in 1843. The Ohio, the River Jordan to slaves, was the border between free and slave states. All the book's major characters and events are real, portrayed as reported in newspapers and historical documents of the time. This vivid, inspiring chronicle of a family's harrowing 2 1/2-week flight across Ohio to freedom in Canada is also a story of heroism and compassion, by black and white Americans alike. There may be no more important story in American history than that of slavery, its abolishment, and the commitment of ordinary Americans to help end this abomination by putting their lives, the lives of their families, and their livelihoods at stake to help the many thousands of slaves who escaped. Jane's story is more timely than ever, and not just because for the first time in our nation's history a black family occupies the White House. Virtually all wars and acts of terrorism in the world today are the result of ethnic hatred and racial prejudice. What better example has there ever been of compassionate, courageous cooperation between the peoples of different races than the Underground Railroad? That inspiring story may have been America's finest hour and is still vital not only for its historical significance but because of what it has to tell us about ourselves today: who we are as Americans, black and white, and what, together, we can accomplish. In the way that enough healing time has to pass before a society is truly ready to examine and learn from its past, the Underground Railroad is a story whose time has finally come.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-This novel brings facts and fiction together to tell the story of Jane and her seven children as they travel the Underground Railroad between Virginia and Canada. Historians will appreciate the accuracy and depth of research, but students will find the plot drenched in distracting details. The dialogue is contrived, and often readers may feel as though they're reading a textbook rather than a moving story about the struggles of a mother and her children trying to escape slavery.

Carrie Lynn Cooper, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

This compelling blend of fact and fiction brings to life one harrowing episode in the complex history of the Underground Railroad: the escape from slavery of Jane and her seven children from a western Virginia tobacco plantation in August of 1843. After a house slave on the Harness plantation alerted Jane that master Solomon Harness planned to take her two oldest sons to auction the following week, she began to seek a means of escape. Her husband, the father of her four oldest children, had been sold at auction and sent south sixteen years earlier, and Jane feared the similar loss of her sons. Also alerted to the family's plight was the leader of the local branch of the Underground Railroad, the most outspoken abolitionist in Marietta, Ohio. He sets the escape plan in motion, and two nights later Jane, her children and three other slaves escaped across the Ohio River in a shroud of fog, which surrounded Jane's family in its clammy blindfold. Comparing themselves to the Israelites fleeing ancient Egypt, slaves had come to call the Ohio River the River Jordan, and crossing this river near Marietta in an overcrowded rowboat was the first step on this family's precarious journey. So begins an odyssey that takes over two weeks, the fugitives staying in woods, barns, and a grain mill, borne in a hay wagon with a false bottom, pursued by bounty hunters and master Harness himself, and faithfully and tenaciously guarded by sympathizers, both black and white, along the way. Part of the authors' gripping story is told in the poignant words of Jane's oldest daughter Caroline, writing years later in her journal. Another voice is that of Henry, one of Jane's younger sons, writing letters to his brother Thornton twenty years later from his post during the Civil War. Author Burke is the great-great-grandson of a slave; he conducted extensive research while working up and down the Ohio River, putting together bits and pieces of information about the inner workings of the Underground Railroad. He skillfully injects his findings into the narrative, filling the historical gaps with the words of the abolitionists who operate the stations visited by Jane and her family in their quest for freedom. Their journey finally ends in Canada in a small community called Dawn, where former slaves are able to find work and become educated. Even as she realizes that she is finally free, Jane finds her new existence both exhilarating and unnerving...for where there were no more chains, there was also no longer the corrupt and meager security that life on the Harness plantation had held for her family. Fueled by a need to unearth the long-buried travails of slaves struggling to make their way to freedom, the authors have produced a riveting account not only of one family's saga, but also of the vast and intricate machinations of the Underground Railroad itself. This book is essential for students, teachers, and anyone searching for a clearer look at slavery, its victims, and those abolitionists who helped to bring about its demise. --Foreword Magazine

The River Jordan: A True Story of the Underground Railroad is the fictionalized account of a true story - the escape of the slave Jane and her seven children from a western Virginia tobacco plantation, on land once owned by George Washington. All major characters and events are not only real, but also closely researched from newspapers and documentation of the time. Careful attention to detail and powerful imagery bring this near impossible journey of hope and freedom to vivid life. Highly recommended. --The Midwest Book Review

A slave's bold quest for freedom, for herself and her family, is the subject of this new historical novel. Authors Burke and Croy give fictional flesh to real stories from historical newspaper accounts to tell this true tale of escape. --Civil War Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Watershed Books (August 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964525224
• ISBN-13: 978-0964525221
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #715,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > History > Middle East > Jordan

More About the Author

Dick Croy is an award-winning screenwriter, novelist and playwright. He was writer and director of The Fourth Dimension, an internationally syndicated series of seven 60-minute TV specials on the paranormal. The River Jordan, which he co-authored with Henry Burke, was a book-of-the-year nominee in 2001. Fugitive Slave, by Croy and Burke, is an award-winning screenplay and its stage play adaptation has received a reading by the Classical Theatre of Harlem in NYC.

He is Screenwriter of the following feature films:
UNKNOWN POWERS*
ALIENS FROM SPACESHIP EARTH*
THE SHASTA GATE
THE SILENCE OF ANNALEE
THE PYRAMID PROPHECY**
WHERE THERE'S A WILL**
THE KRONGOLD INCIDENT**
WHAT ROUGH BEAST?
THE BIKES FROM MOMBASA
AGAINST THE GRAIN
THE RIVER JORDAN**
FUGITIVE SLAVE**
THE TALL DARK MAN**
WATER FROM A DEEPER WELL
TERRA INCOGNITA
PORT BOU**
HEADHUNTERS
FALSE FLAG
(*already produced) (**shared credit)

Television Programs:
MAN OF MIRACLES*
THE MIRACLE HEALERS*
WORLD BEYOND DEATH*
AGE OF THE PSYCHICS*
UNDERGROUND DOCTORS*
THE UNKNOWN FORCE*

Author of the following novels:
THE SHASTA GATE
THE SILENCE OF ANNALEE
THE KRONGOLD INCIDENT**
WHAT ROUGH BEAST?
DOWSING FOR LOVE (WATER FROM A DEEPER WELL)
THE RIVER JORDAN**

Playwright of the following plays:
THE JUDGE AND ME**
BEDTIME STORIES
WATER FROM A DEEPER WELL
FUGITIVE SLAVE**
MORONS
EXPIATION
NAMASTÉ

Awards Won:
Gold Medal - MIRACLE HEALERS
Greater Miami International Film Festival
Golden Eagle - MIRACLE HEALERS and UNKNOWN POWERS
12th Annual Festival of the Americas
Houston International Film Festival
Silver Medal - WORLD BEYOND DEATH
12th Annual Festival of the Americas
Houston International Film Festival
Award of Excellence - UNKNOWN POWERS
Film Advisory Board
Blue Ribbon - UNKNOWN POWERS
Fifth Film Renaissance
First Runner-Up - FUGITIVE SLAVE
Ohio Independent Film Festival

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important books; a must read!, March 1, 2002

By 

Julie A. Earhart (St. Louis, mo United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The River Jordan: A True Story of the Underground Railroad (Paperback)

Henry Burke & Dick Croy's historical novel, The River Jordan, is an important book. It's not the best written, it's not the best plotted, the dialect is distracting, and the dialogue somewhat predictable, but it doesn't matter. This is an important book because for the first time in a long time, in my recent memory anyway (and I'm no expert), readers have the opportunity to learn about some of the people who traveled and conducted the Underground Railroad.

Mixing fact with fiction, Burke & Croy use the escape of a slave named Jane and her seven children in August 1843. The reproduction of an Ohio newspaper article about the escape and a copy of the reward poster give the story an authenticity that otherwise may be lacking.

When Jane discovers that her two oldest sons, Alfred and Augustus, are about to be sold down the river, she takes action. She's already lost her husband to the slavers and is not about to let her sons leave her. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Jane and her family cross the Ohio River and head for Canada where they will be free, as long as they don't commit any crimes, however. An escape attempt by this many people at one time is not the usual escape. But Jane is determined, and she and her family set out on a dark, foggy night.

What follows the family's escape route, how they avoided the posse led by their owner, Solomon Harness, a glimpse of those who conducted the line, and a topograhy of Ohio. As I mentioned earlier, the book isn't well written, too much is trying to be covered in too little space and the sentence fragments drove me nuts, letters from the Civil War between two of Jane's youngest sons are ill-placed and jarring. However, I enjoyed Jane's story and could feel the desperation she must have felt. I think that The River Jordan is a must for every public and school library across the country. By putting names and faces together with a story, children (and adults) learn more easily; The River Jordan gives reader pause to think about the people who put themselves in harm's way so they could be free or they could help some enjoy the freedoms they already knew.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Story Is the Real Deal, November 7, 2001

By 

Sandra Moats (West Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The River Jordan: A True Story of the Underground Railroad (Paperback)

There is a need for this story to be told. Slavery was an evil institution. And yet there were brave people who violated the Fugitive Slave Law in order to obey the dictates of conscience.
Black and white Americans once worked together to help black men, women and children escape from slavery. Obviously the black people who helped escaping slaves risked their own lives in the process. So did some of the white people, particularly those who operated the Underground Railroad inside the borders of slave states.
I have done some Underground Railroad research myself on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River, and I can say with some authority that the events in this story are true. Co-author Henry Burke is an African-American whose roots in Southeastern Ohio pre-date the Civil War. He has spent his life learning about the Underground Railroad as it operated in his part of the country.
The River Jordan is a fictionalized account, in very readable form, of a true story. This book has a wonderful book review printed on the back cover.
The Underground Railroad scholar who wrote the book review for The River Jordan is none other than Dr. Ancella Bickley, one of the most distinguished African-American women of West Virginia.
Dr. Bickley was part of the U.S. government effort, through the National Park Service, to document the Underground Railroad. Obviously, her word on anything connected with the Underground Railroad carries great weight. Here's what Dr. Ancella Bickley wrote about The River Jordan:
"The River Jordan is an important addition to the regional literature of slavery. Blending fiction and fact, it brings to the public a daring tale of an enslaved family's Underground Railroad-assisted escape from western Virginia, an area seldom considered in tales featuring "the peculiar institution." Enriched by memorable characters and incidents and masterfully rendered, the novel connects the authenticity of history with storytelling. Juxtaposing slavery against family love, which powers the compelling and dangerous quest for freedom, the story illustrates the motivating influence of a mother's concern. Combined with the bravery, artful maneuvering, and humanitarian commitment of Underground Railroad workers, this concern facilitates the family's audacious escape. The River Jordan is a must read for all those who are interested in a truthful and enlightened look at a dark period in our country's history."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The fictionalized account of a true story, September 10, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The River Jordan: A True Story of the Underground Railroad (Paperback)

The River Jordan: A True Story Of The Underground Railroad is the fictionalized account of a true story - the escape of the slave Jane and her seven children from a western Virginia tobacco plantation, on land once owned by George Washington. All major characters and events are not only real, but also closely researched from newspapers and documentation of the time. Careful attention to detail and powerful imagery bring this near impossible journey of hope and freedom to vivid life. Highly recommended.