Freedom Dues

In 1729 Ireland times are hard and even harder for the protestant Scotch-Irish in a predominate Catholic society. Blair Eakins and his brother Ronald pay for passage to America by becoming indentured servants for a term of four years. Not knowing when they left Ireland what they were getting into in America as indentured servants. In London a young ten year old pickpocket Mallie Ambrose is arrested for stealing a handkerchief and sentenced to transportation to Maryland as an indentured servant for 7 years. In the story between masters and in passing Blair and Mallie get to know each other. The story is of the hellish life of the indentured servant in the 1700's in colonial America. They are treated the same or sometimes worse than slaves. The masters take liberties with the female servants and they have no way to prevent the abuse. If they become pregnant their child is indentured to the master until they are 21 and the servant is beaten with the whip. The indentured servant are beaten with the whip for any small error. When they cause the master to become angry with them or if they try to escape they are not only beaten, but time is added to their indentured time, thus through small little life occurrences they can become unpaid slaves for way longer than their original period and sometimes for life. Some didn't last that long as they died in servitude. It is a hard life, but the few that survive and make a life for themselves find it worth it . This is a story of two of those servants and the events that happened in their servitude. It is rather sad and not a lot is written about in our history books, but it should have been. These people truly were in slavery to their masters. I learned much from this book, I had heard of indentured servants before, but not much about their actual lives as servants. It was not a pretty picture. It is a part of history and needs to be remembered. I would recommend this book. Thanks to Indra Zuno for writing an informative story about a time in history, to Sarah-Jane Drummey for her wonderful narration of the audio book , to Spinning a Yarn Press for publishing it and to NetGalley for making it available to me.