The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier - 20BOS26-11

Tracy Chevalier is best known for her book about Vermeer, Girl with the Pearl Earring, but her skill - whether writing about a 17th century Dutch servant or a Quaker newly arrived in pre-Civil War America - is her ability to transport the reader to that exact time and place. Being jilted at any time is painful but clearly even worse in a small Quaker community, which has happened to Honor. 

Her sister Grace became engaged via letter to a member of their community, Adam Cox, who traveled to the New World to help his ailing brother with a drygoods business. Hannah decides to accompany her sister, to escape from her feeling of humiliation, although she has to realize she is unlikely to ever see her family again. At the very least, she should have waited until they heard from Adam before she embarked!

The voyage to America is difficult for Honor but things are about to get much worse: her sister dies on their way to Ohio. Imagine how alone you would feel in this situation! Honor has nowhere to go except to her sister’s fiance, who learns that Grace died in the same note in which he learns Honor has arrived, sent by an eccentric milliner, Belle Mills, who becomes Honor’s only friend. Adam has just lost the brother he came to America to assist. The household Hannah joins is the epitome of awkwardness, consisting of Adam, a quiet man dealing with his own losses and the challenge of establishing a business in a small town, and his widowed sister-in-law (who is jealous of the new arrival and, as Honor sees instantly, is a dreadful housekeeper).

Honor has never encountered black people before and has been conditioned to disapprove of slavery, but the attitudes around her vary dramatically. Belle is hiding escaped slaves and assisting them on their way to Canada but her brother, Donovan, is a slave hunter, triumphantly capturing them and sending them back to the South, empowered by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required those in free states like Ohio to assist in capturing and returning escaped enslaved people, denied accused individuals the right to a jury trial, and imposed steep fines and jail time for anyone who helped them.

“Why don’t the Negroes remain in Ohio? I thought there was no slavery here.”

“Some do stop in Ohio - you’ll see free blacks in Oberlin - but freedom’s guaranteed in Canada. Different country, different laws, so slave hunters got no power there.”

Honor finds herself in a very difficult situation: despite being afraid, she wants to help escaped slaves on their way to Oberlin and, ultimately, Canada. However, she is also afraid of Donovan and worried about offending and endangering those who have given her a new home. Some readers criticize Honor’s passivity but I think she is extremely brave. She is a quiet person, accustomed previously to letting her older sister speak for her. Adjusting to a new life where she is tolerated, not loved, would be difficult for anyone, without adding the dangerous activity of helping enslaved runaways on the Underground Railroad. She has to decide whether she is brave enough to take a stand and how the ramifications would affect her new life.

As in A Single Thread, one of my favorite books of 2021, the heroine is a gifted needlewoman. This helps her establish a bond with Belle, whom she helps by stitching away on bonnets too ornate for a Quaker to wear. Honor is a quilter, pained that she had to give away some of her best quilts before she left England and use her precious trunk space on a signature quilt:

Each square consisted of brown and green and cream squares and triangles, with a white patch in the middle signed by the maker. Originally begun for Grace, when Honor decided at the last minute to go to America as well, the makers rearranged the configuration of names so that hers was in the central square, with family members in the squares around it, and friends beyond those. Quilted in a simple diamond pattern, it was not especially beautiful, and it was not designed in the way Honor would have chosen. But she could never give it to anyone else: it had been made for her to remember her community by.

Quilting is the way Honor tries to control the unsettled world around her, but her skill also sets her apart from the women in Ohio. I liked her as a character and loved all the descriptions of bonnets and hats (and here is a link to some signature quilts I enjoyed). Chevalier attended Oberlin and conducted extensive Ohio research for this book. She emphasizes how vulnerable women are: Donovan, like Jack Wells in A Single Thread, is a stalker and I was worried he would assault Honor but I think he genuinely likes her. It is an unusual but compelling book - I could not put it down.

Title: The Last Runaway
Author: Tracy Chevalier
Publication: Penguin, trade paperback, 2013
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: 1850s Ohio
Source: Personal copy

Reading The Last Runaway contributed to these challenges:

• 20 Books of Summer 2026

• Historical Fiction Challenge 2026