Before they begin to read, have your students take a closer look at the design of Ashes, Forge, and Chains. With extensive back matter, Ashes has many roles to play in explorations of content, theme, and characterization.īook Format and Meaning-Making.

Readers will be pleased with this satisfying conclusion. With both armies relying on African American soldiers, and making promises of freedom they cannot keep, Isabel is forced to make a decision about which side she is on, just as she and Ruth, and she and Curzon, must determine the very nature of their relationships to one another. But the war has other plans for them, and the trio winds up at the crossroads of Virginia as the Battle of Yorktown begins to take shape. Despite this, Isabel assumes her role as caretaker, leading Ruth out of South Carolina, heading north towards Rhode Island, relying on her strength, wits, forged freedom papers, and Curzon to get there.

But Ruth, who was sold into southern plantation slavery in 1777 as a consequence of Isabel’s spying on the British as they occupied Manhattan, refuses to acknowledge Isabel, and claims she does not remember her or her previous life in Rhode Island and New York. After years of searching and sacrificing to find her sister, protagonist Isabel finally finds her, with the help of her friend Curzon. As she has done previously in Chains and Forge, novelist Laurie Halse Anderson paints a realistic portrait of life for both free and enslaved African Americans in colonial America, honoring the skills, expertise, and talents of men and women, clarifying the diverse roles that African Americans played in early America, and noting the dangerous and fluid boundaries between freedom, enslavement, and self-liberation.

While the book culminates the trilogy, it can be read as a stand alone novel as well. The Seeds of America trilogy that began in New York City in 1776 with the National Book Award finalist Chains, and continued at Valley Forge in 1777 with Forge, concludes at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 with Ashes.

Ashes by laurie halse anderson summary