Clotel
William Wells Brown
 The narrative of Clotel plays with history by relating the "perilous antebellum adventures" of a young slave Currer and her mixed-race, light-skinned daughters fathered by Thomas Jefferson. Their girls are born into slavery. The book includes "several sub-plots" related to other slaves, religion and anti-slavery. Currer, described as "a bright mulatto," gives birth to two "near white" daughters: Clotel and Althesa. After the death of Jefferson, Currer and her daughters are sold. Horatio Green, a white man, purchases Clotel and takes her as a common-law wife, although they cannot legally marry. Her mother Currer and sister Althesa remain "in a slave gang." Currer is eventually purchased by Mr. Peck, a preacher. She is enslaved until she dies from yellow fever, although his daughter was preparing to emancipate her. Althesa marries her white owner, Henry Morton, a Northerner, with whom she has daughters Jane and Ellen. Their daughters are enslaved after Althesa and Morton both die. Ellen commits suicide to escape sexual enslavement and Jane dies from heartbreak. Green and Clotel have a mixed-race daughter named Mary. Becoming ambitious and involved in local politics, Green abandons Clotel and Mary. He marries "a white woman who forces him to sell Clotel and enslave his child." Dressing as a white man, Clotel escapes to Ohio (an account based on the 1849 escape of Ellen Craft and William Craft). Her accomplice, William, continues to Canada. Clotel returns to Virginia in an attempt to free Mary. After being captured in Richmond, she is held in a slave pen in Washington, DC, for sale but eventually escapes. Pursued by slave catchers, she is surrounded on the Long Bridge and commits suicide by jumping into the Potomac River. Mary works as a servant to her father Horatio Green and his wife. Mary arranges to trade places with the slave George, her lover, in prison and he escapes to Canada. Sold to a slave trader, Mary is purchased by a French man who takes her to Europe. Ten years later, George and Mary reunite in Dunkirk. The novel ends with their marriage.