Description

This will be a “ book club” style discussion of “Dreams of Freedom,” a new historical fiction novel written by local author Marilyn Higgins. We’ll discuss the story of 20 year old Irish immigrant Aileen O’Malley and her harrowing decades-long journey to find her indentured father and kidnapped siblings along the Erie Canal. The class will examine the environment here when black farming communities were taking hold, violent mobs were disrupting abolitionist gatherings, millions of immigrants were arriving, new religions were being spawned, and tribes of the Haudenosaunee nation were being pushed off their ancestral lands. We’ll also discuss the innovation, religious fervor and social justice movements that resulted from that environment and examine the similarities between upstate New York during the years 1830-1865 and today. Finally, the author will also engage the class in a discussion of  “Novel Tourism,” and develop ideas for this practice in upstate New York.