Review -- Glory over Everything

Glory over Everything

Beyond the Kitchen House

By

Kathleen Grissom

Simon & Schuster

In 1830s Philadelphia, James Burton was a wealthy, respected, talented silversmith, but even more he was a man with a huge secret—he is the son of a slave and the master of Tall Oaks plantation in Virginia. He has been passing as white, but when his aristocratic married mistress Caroline becomes pregnant, he knows his identity could be revealed. Then his beloved servant Pan is abducted and sold as a slave. Fulfilling a promise to Pan’s escaped slave father, the man who helped him when he reached Pennsylvania, James agrees to head south to find and bring Pan home.

Caroline’s father, though, has learned James’ secret and threatens to reveal all unless James leaves his daughter and Philadelphia behind.

James knows the slave hunters who tracked him when he killed his own father and escaped Virginia are still searching for him. His journey is fraught with danger, but aided by new friends, he locates Pan and makes for the Underground Railroad, with the young boy and the woman who helped them escape. Will they all make it through the Great Dismal Swamp and back to freedom?

Seen through the various points of view of James, Pan and others, Glory over Everything is not a book you will soon forget. Although it’s a continuation of Grissom’s The Kitchen House, it’s also a stand-alone. It’s not necessary to read the first book to be drawn into the characters and their stories in Glory over Everything. It’s poignant, haunting, beautiful and filled with what love and loyalty, friendship and kindness can accomplish against horrible malevolence.

Five stars.