The Entailed Hat

Set on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, this ambitious historical novel dramatizes the dark world of the ‘Reverse Underground Railroad,’ in which free Black people were kidnapped and sold into slavery, and follows a memorable cast caught up in crime, conscience, and redemption. Townsend, a noted journalist, weaves regional history, romance, and moral drama into a richly detailed portrait of a troubled time and place. Ambitious and vivid, The Entailed Hat exposes a shameful chapter of American history through absorbing storytelling. A substantial work of nineteenth-century historical fiction, it combines adventure and social conscience in its account of a region shaped by slavery.