October Booked For Lunch

This October, Booked for Lunch will be reading and discussing All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore. One of the best books of the year for 2024 according to The Washington Post and NPR. The debut novel from award winning journalist and lawyer Ashton Lattimore tells the story of the rebel, the socialite, and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this gripping tale of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom.

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slave catchers who would destroy their new lives.

Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.

Regular and large-print copies are available now at the circulation desk. Digital editions are available for download using Libby. Join the discussion in person or online via Zoom, on Monday, October 27 at noon. Need the Zoom link? Register using our calendar or by email at RBrzozowski@cwmars.org.