Bookseller Publisher Review
Readers of Australian history will be familiar with John Baileys award-winning The White Divers of Broome, which explored racial antagonisms on Australias northwest coast. Racial themes also dominate his new book, which examines slavery in 19th-century Louisiana. It focuses on the remarkable case of a young German immigrant girl who disappeared not long after her arrival in Louisiana. Twenty-five years later, her relations believed they had found her in the slums of New Orleans. However, the woman they discovered was living as a slave, with no memory of her white origins. In the ensuing legal battle for the freedom of this woman, which hinged on her racial identity, the basic assumptions of Louisiana society about race and gender were tested. In supplying the historical context for this case, Bailey provides a fascinating examination of the horrifying laws and attitudes that upheld slavery. In addition, his descriptions of the exotic melting pot of 19th-century New Orleans are so evocative that the reader can almost smell the steamy swamp air. This is an immensely readable courtroom drama for readers who like their history to be serious, yet also compelling and entertaining. Katrina Ford is a bookseller and freelance writer. C. 2003 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-A fascinating mystery obsessed and polarized New Orleans from 1843 until its shocking conclusion in 1849. A close-knit community of German immigrants made an amazing claim: they had seen a young slave woman whom they were sure was the daughter of a relative who had sailed with them from Holland years earlier. After her parents died, the girl and her sister had been sent off to become indentured servants. No one knew what had happened to them, but the community was positive that the slave woman known as Mary or Brigit Wilson was really Salome Muller. Lawyers were assembled, and the battle lines were drawn. The Germans maintained that an unscrupulous former owner, John Fitz Miller, had enslaved an indentured child and later sold her to her current owner. Miller hired a "dream team" to press his claim that Mary was merely a clever slave, duping a bunch of credulous immigrants. Adding to the puzzle was her lack of memory of a German childhood and Miller's inability to prove that he had bought her. Bailey has provided a rich, vibrant New Orleans setting. Using court transcripts, pamphlets produced by both sides, newspaper stories, and biographies, he has produced a courtroom thriller with unexpected twists and turns. The details he includes about the horrors of the immigrant experience, and his discussions of laws governing slave owners, make this a valuable history lesson as well.-Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Who was Sally Miller: was she Salom? Miller, a long-lost German immigrant girl enslaved by a Southern planter? Or was she really a light-skinned black woman, shrewd enough to exploit her only opportunity for freedom? Bailey (The White Diver of Broome) keeps us guessing until the end in this page-turning true courtroom drama of 19th-century New Orleans. Bailey opens the story in 1843, when a friend of the Schubers-a local family of German immigrants-discovered Miller outside her owner Louis Belmonti's house. Struck by her remarkable resemblance to their late cousin Dorothea Miller, and unusual birthmarks exactly like he daughter Salom?'s, the Schubers claimed Sally as kin and set about trying to prove her identity as Salom? and obtain her freedom. Bailey brings to life the fierce legal proceedings with vivid strokes. The case was controversial because it wasn't Belmonti but her previous owner, the perfect Southern gentleman John Fitz Miller, who faced disgrace if proved to have forced a white German girl into slavery. Bailey elucidates the bewildering array of possible identities turned up for Sally by numerous witnesses as well as the complexities of 19th-century Louisiana slave law and the status of black women. Sally herself remains an enigma at the center of this highly engrossing tale. Agent, Catherine Drayton of Arthur Pine Associates. 50,000 first printing. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An immigrant family's struggles bring a web of intrigue leading to a cause cÉlèbre in antebellum New Orleans, known then as America's "Sin City." In his dogged dissection of one of the most ornate and convoluted legal cases ever played out in an American slave state, Bailey, who originally published this in his native Australia, does a fine job of resurrecting the ambience and cultural atmosphere of New Orleans in the 1840s. The dominant Creoles' lifestyle in the Vieux CarrÉ is luxuriously carefree; the poor, on the other hand, are scourged by yellow fever, harried by constant threat of floods, and preyed on by landholders, river-men, and other opportunists. And beneath even the poor are the slaves, locked into their fates by Louisiana's elaborate system of racist legal codes administered by courts as corrupt as the municipal power structure that populated them. Into this mix, in 1843, suddenly walks a young woman immediately recognized in a German neighborhood as SalomÉ MÜller, the long-lost daughter of fellow immigrants arriving in 1818. She responds by giving her name as Sally Miller and reporting that she is in fact the property--a slave--of the owner of a nearby cabaret. Thus begins the epic struggle of the German community to reclaim one of its own and, in the process, impugn the honor of a plantation owner who supposedly took advantage of an orphaned white girl. But, the court inquires, is she really white? Is she really who she claims to be--or a light-skinned runaway slave imposter? Bailey's trial narrative is a virtual education on the bizarre legalisms once regularly applied to human chattel; when, for instance, freedom eventually comes to Sally--or whoever she was--it is denied her children. An eye-opener to the racism that's so deeply embedded in the fabric of American society. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Bailey plays historical detective as he re-creates one of the most sensational trial cases of the nineteenth century. Recognized by a former neighbor in New Orleans in 1843 as Salome Muller, the dusky-skinned daughter of German immigrants who disappeared 25 years earlier, Sally Miller, a slave with virtually no memory of her white past, quickly became the focal point of a controversial lawsuit waged on her behalf to gain her freedom. In addition to attempting to unravel this compelling mystery, Bailey also details the complex network of slave laws that necessarily impacted the course of this intriguing case. Putting his own spin on the courtroom proceedings, the author views this historical drama through a modern lens. This fast-paced legal reconstruction reads like a work of fiction. --Margaret Flanagan Copyright 2004 Booklist
Library Journal Review
A nominee for Australia's NSW Premier's Award, this work recounts events in 1840s New Orleans, where a woman recognized a slave as a friend's long-missing daughter. With a six-city author tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
