Ilyon Woo

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

From the Publisher

The year 1848 was a year of global democratic revolt. Sicily, Paris, Berlin, Vienna – people across Europe rose up against tyrannical power. Americans received news of these uprisings while the ground beneath their own feet shifted: there were five hundred thousand square miles of new territory to be claimed westward; immigrants from Ireland, Germany, China, and elsewhere were arriving; in New York, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held; and the two-party political system was breaking down as voters became polarized over the issue of slavery.
Against this backdrop in Macon, Georgia, the enslaved married couple William and Ellen Craft planned their escape from bondage. Their story is one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as a master and slave, sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across 1,000 miles in broad daylight, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains from bondage to the free states of the North.
The world is remembering the heroic couple, with not one but two movies planned: first, an adaptation of William and Ellen Crafts’ memoir, directed by Hanelle M. Culpepper, and second, a film directed by Lynn Nottage and Tony Gerber that focuses on the Crafts’ lives after their escape in the free North, when they had to navigate their sudden celebrity. In 2023, the year of the 175th anniversary of the Crafts’ escape, MASTER SLAVE HUSBAND WIFE: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo launched a renaissance for the Crafts and their story. Now available in paperback (on sale January 16, 2024/ Simon & Schuster), the book brings William and Ellen Craft’s cinematic story of daring, determination, and love to life.
During William and Ellen Craft’s journey, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers who might have revealed their true identities. One traveler who encountered Ellen Craft in disguise as a disabled White man remarked that the invalid was “either a woman or a genius.” It turns out Ellen was both!
After securing their freedom in the North, the tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles crisscrossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.
But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States. With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all.
Reviews

“It’s an edge-of-your-seat drama that will leave many wondering why the duo’s remarkable story has been so overlooked by history.” – Time, “100 Must-Read Books of 2023”

“A narrative of such courage and resourcefulness it seems too dashing to be true. But it is. . . . The story is so richly dramatic, and Ms. Woo so skilled at spinning it out, that at times it’s a genuine nail-biter.” – Priscilla M. Jensen, The Wall Street Journal

“Woo’s history draws from a variety of sources, including the Crafts’ own account, to reconstruct a ‘journey of mutual self-emancipation,’ while artfully sketching the background of a nation careering toward civil war.” – The New Yorker

“A pathbreaking book. . . . Riveting.” – Stuart Miller, The Los Angeles Times

“A suspenseful, sensitively rendered account of [Ellen and William Craft’s] four-day journey to the North. . . . Woo tells the story [with] a cinematic eye. She excels at setting scenes, conjuring the sensations experienced by the Crafts at each harrowing point. . . . The vivid details help Woo to convey the Crafts’ attention to every element of their plot.” – W. Caleb McDaniel, The New York Times Book Review

“Master Slave Husband Wife tells one of the most important stories of American slavery and freedom. With prose that is suspenseful, brilliantly detailed, historically precise, and simply gorgeous, Woo depicts the Crafts and their historic role in antebellum America stunningly. This is a story that will stay with you for a lifetime.”

Check previous discussions on topics involving Slavery:

[Broadcast on June 13, 2024 and rebroadcast on September 25, 2025; recorded earlier.]

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      Ilyon Woo, PhD, is the author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times. She received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant for MASTER SLAVE HUSBAND WIFE. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal, and she has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, among other institutions. She holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University.

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