Otto Bookstore


	Otto Bookstore A Booklover's Paradise in the Heart of Downtown Williamsport 107 W. Fourth St. Williamsport, PA 17701 570-326-5764, 1-888-762-4526 ottobook@comcast.net

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September First Friday Author Event:

“Redfield Farm” Reveals the Personal Sacrifice of the “Conductors” on the Underground Railroad by Betsy Rider

Ann Redfield lives a simple life in a Quaker community in southern Pennsylvania. She looks forward to marriage and a family with a stalwart farmer of like faith. But when she helps her brother hide and transport runaway slaves to the next “station,” she gets too deeply involved to think of her own future. She and her brother, and even the rest of her family, suffer the consequences of following their conscience.

“Redfield Farm” is a very well researched novel of a Quaker family in southern Pennsylvania before and during the Civil War. It’s filled with the paradoxes of faith versus conscience. Lying becomes second nature to those who would avoid the bounty hunters ready to call in the constable to seize the runaways. Those in their faith community believe in the freedom and dignity of all, but turn their back on a child of mixed race. They profess pacifism but some of them are led by their conscience to join the union army. Ann follows her own path but clings to her faith in spite of it.

Judith Cooper, the author of “Redfield Farm,” is a retired Penn State professor of history. Her research is extensive, not only in the Quaker life during the 1800’s but in the camps, the makeshift hospitals and the battlefields of the Civil War. And she is a master at portraying the personal relationships in an extended family without making any of the characters all black or white personality-wise.

Judith will be one of the guests for September's First Friday at Otto’s. She will sign her books from 5 to 8. Also signing, Otto’s will have Michael Capuzzo, author of the New York Times Bestseller, “The Murder Room,” and Richard Walters, one of the leading characters in that non-fiction account of a unique group of retired sleuths who meet monthly to solve “cold cases” the authorities have given up on.