Review: All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore

Title: All We Were Promised

Author: Ashton Lattimore

Year published: 2024

Category: Adult fiction (historical)

Pages: 347 pages

Rating: 4 out of 5

Location: (my 2024 Google Reading map): USA ( PA)

Summary: Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slave catchers who would destroy their new lives.

Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.

Review: I meant to read this book a while ago, but I had just read James and Master Slave Husband Wife (links are to my reviews) and wanted a break for books on similar topics. I am glad I gave this novel its own space.

This novel is told from the viewpoints of three Black women in Philadelphia: Nell who is established, free, and part of the higher society. She fancies herself an abolitionist though she is more into being an abolitionist on paper than any real action. Charlotte is a runaway slave who is now free after living in Philadelphia for more than 6 months (that was the law). She wants to make a difference by helping other runaways, but she herself is trapped in an unfortunate situation. Evie is young and in the city with her mistress. She needs the other two to escape. 

This novel is a reminder that once you escape enslavement and arrive in the north, you are still not necessarily free or respected or safe. Yes, they were officially free in northern states, but the social stigma of having dark skin, the way white people treated Black people, and the opportunities afforded them were certainly not on the same level.

This novel has a number of different historical events and ideas in it which makes the story all the more compelling.

Challenges for which this counts: none