Beverly Lowry does not intend for this book to be a book of intense scholarship, she just wants to share Araminta Ross Davis' (Harriet Tubman)  story as she imagines it.  Few exploit of free or enslaved persons capture the American imagination as deeply as Harriet Tubman's.  The grandeur of her spirit is intensely sensational, almost mythical.   

Tubman's life spans some ninety-one years, from 1822-1913, which Lowry has divided into four electrifying parts.  Tubman is still one of the most fascinating persons of the dark period through which so many suffered.  And she has to be one of the  ruest representations of the 'women's movement' as will ever be seen.  She was an escaped slave, lumberjack, laundress, raid leader, nurse, fund-raiser, cook, intelligence gatherer, Underground Railroad organizer, and abolitionist.  Those periods of Tubman's life garnered names too numerous to cite.  Two of the most familiar are Moses, as she led slaves to the promised land on the tracks of her legendary 'Railroad', and "the General", so dubbed by John Brown when she scouted for the Union army. 

You wonder if people today are interested in such a dark heritage or the horrific details that were our beacon to this station?  But I digress.  At the time of her interviews, Tubman lived in central New York State, in the town of Auburn.  Since she could neither read nor write, she could not record any parts of her story, so aside from the interviews, much of it comes second or third hand.  Yet, her story still offers a challenging opportunity for writers of nonfiction. 

In HARRIET TUBMAN: Imagining A Dream, Lowry creates a portrait that transforms the legendary icon into flesh and blood. Lowry brings this American hero through a vastly unpleasant life without the burden of too much detail and without going off-point.  This is truly a reader's book, as Tubman takes us on slave-freeing raids and onto the battlefields of the Civil War; it invokes deep imagination and vicarious meandering.   Lowry presents Tubman's story with good pace, good suspense, and the warmth of an enigma who literally gave her life to people. Humbling!

Reviewed by aNN Brown
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers