Betty DeRamus

Betty DeRamus is an award-winning American journalist and author whose reporting has ranged from culture to African American history. Forbidden Fruit gathers documented love stories from the era of slavery and the Underground Railroad, focusing on couples who resisted laws and customs that denied their freedom. Atria Books published the collection in 2005 with the fuller subtitle Love Stories from the Underground Railroad. DeRamus drew on descendants, memoirs, Civil War records, census material, magazines, and other historical documents. Her journalistic background includes work for the Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, Essence, Life, and the BBC, as well as recognition from the Michigan Press Association and the Deems Taylor awards. The book recovers little-known personal histories instead of treating its subjects only as symbols of an era. By centering partnership, endurance, and individual choice, Forbidden Fruit carries DeRamus's archival reporting into narrative nonfiction while retaining the specificity of the people whose experiences she reconstructs.