The OTHER Laurie Halse Anderson Book

This book didn't seem like one I should read at first because war stories bore me after a little while. I've a read a bunch of them, like Amelia's War, the American Girl series, a lot of historical fiction and all that good stuff, just sometimes it doesn't appeal to me and this is one of those times.
But this book surprised me; it wasn't really about the revolutionary war at all, that's just the background of the story. Really, it's about Isabel, a slave seeking freedom under the cover of war.
I just want to tell Isabel that she's about a hundred years early for freedom, though, and two hundred years for actual respect.
Isabel is a slave with her sister, Ruth. When their master dies they know they were set free by her will, but the will is lost and Isabel and Ruth get sold to the evil Locktons. The Locktons are Loyalists pretending to be Patriots, and we watch as their situation goes from bad to worse. Along the way, Mrs. Lockton, the evilest of them all, a wicked stepmother, if you will, sells Ruth because she is feeble-minded. (NOOOOOO!!!)




Isabel goes insane in a way. She realizes that technically her soul is free, because Mrs. Lockton can do whatever she wants with the rest of her but her soul cannot be bound, especially now that Mrs. Lockton can't hold Ruth over her.
Still, Isabel seeks freedom. And she gets it! It probably had to be a one-in-two-million shot that she would succeed, but she does, and she takes her friend Curzon with her. And now there's going to be a sequel called Forge, and I gotta read it.
But yeah, I've read one other historical fiction novel by Laurie Halse Anderson and that was Fever 1793. That was also my favorite for a while, and this book doesn't really disappoint.