Stone Mountain, GA The Red Spoke is a novel about a white Southerner and his former slave who become stealth abolitionist. Buck Jernigan, his wife Betty Gail, their twins, Norman and Mia and their two free Negros, Isaac and Sally, live in the small hamlet of Stone Mountain, Georgia. Unknown to Betty Gail and Sally, Buck and Isaac become stealth abolitionists freeing nearly fifty local area slaves. Buck and Isaac are deeply committed and submerged in the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada. This was accomplished, in part, with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. Buck and Isaac meet with Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave and a leader and worker on the Underground Railroad. She made 13 trips to the South, helping to free over 70 people. “Buck, did you ever think about sin?” Buck replies, “I think about it all of the time. Why do you ask?” Isaac continues, “Sin is man-made. It sure would be a nice world if’n man did not sin.” Buck looks at Isaac, “Never thought of it that way, Isaac, but you are absolutely correct.”
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