Night Flyer by Tiya Miles

This is subtitled: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People. Harriet Tubman is one of the ten most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill (Andrew Jackson finally getting his comeuppance, the very antithesis of an American hero replaced by a woman born a slave). Tubman, who was indeed born into slavery as Araminta “Minty” Ross in Maryland, suffered a traumatic brain injury at the age of 12 or 13 at the hands of an overseer, which resulted in what sounds like a form of temporal lobe epilepsy. The injury may explain the dreams and visions she later experienced that, along with the sale of her sisters, were motivating factors for her later actions as a woman guided by God to bring her people to freedom. She changed her name upon marrying, at approximately 22 to a free Black man named John Tubman, taking his last name, and her mother’s first name, Harriet. Thus, Minty Ross, the slave, became Harriet Tubman the liberator. She was small, disabled, but a gifted outdoorswoman who was fearless. Harriet is credited with multiple round-trips along the underground railroad, conducting approximately 70 enslaved people to freedom, starting with family and friends, but her mission expanded, and she often talked about being guided and that she received messages about how and where to go to rescue people. During the Civil War, itself, she also functioned as a military scout and spy, and she proved essential in a June 1863 raid into Confederate territory that freed nearly 750 slaves. Even with the end of the war and slavery, she carried on her mission for God, managing a boarding house and assisted living center in her home in the north. Hers is an inspirational story and this version is a wonder to read.