Caleb and the Library Ghost

by Daniel Cole

1843: Sally May, a 15-year-old Georgia house slave is caring for 8-year-old Frankie Wainwright, the son of Sally’s “Massa”, Jack Wainwright, one of several slave overseers working for Mr. A.C. Wilson, the plantation owner. When Frankie shows Sally his second-grade reader, Sally becomes enchanted with the written word. Over the next several years, on the sly, Frankie teaches Sally to read, an act that was illegal in 19th Century Georgia. Frankie soon learns that Sally is a true genius—she learns to read at an incredible rate—faster than he or any of his classmates. He supplies her voracious reading appetite with books, quickly advancing to Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe, hiding them away in the “potato bin” in the plantation’s old smokehouse. But, there is a price to be paid for their secret sin . . .

1878: Frank Wainwright composes “The Life and Times of Sally May Porter”, a biography of Sally’s sad life. He uses his own diaries, which he maintained throughout his friendship with Sally, plus information that Sally provided about her life before she was sold “down the river” from her original slave hut in Kentucky. He tells of the two sons she bore, both of whom were ripped away from her and sold into slavery. Her first son, James, was the product of abuse by Frank’s father, Jack Wainwright. The other, Rupert, was fathered by Sally’s husband, a powerful, but loving slave named Benjamin Porter. Sally’s life is tragic, but the one shining thread—her love of reading—turns out to have an incredible redeeming value in . . .,

2016: Caleb Carlson, all five-feet-nothing and 80 pounds of him is also a voracious reader. He might well be called Sally’s kindred spirit. He is a high-school Freshman with red hair and freckles and he loves to read in the 135-year-old A.C. Wilson Public Library in Macon Springs, Georgia. Sitting on the second floor, facing the west window, Caleb enjoys looking out at the “Library Oak”, a 165-year-old tree with a mysterious history. He may not be able to read there for much longer, however, as the Town Board is working on a proposal to demolish the old building and build a new library. Most people in town consider the library to be haunted by a 19th Century ghost who may have been buried under the basement floor and who seems to have a penchant for the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. Can Caleb and his favorite teacher, Eve Swanson, convince the Town Board that the library is not haunted, but actually a historic site and save it from the wrecking ball? To do so, they must overcome the small town’s ignorance and the prejudice of some of its citizens against Eve Swanson, who is black. Caleb’s journey begins when he finds Frank Wainwright’s hand-written biography of Sally May Porter in an antique file cabinet in the library’s dingy basement. As he reads the biography, and other items he finds nearby, he gradually pieces together the entire history of the library—and the Library Oak. The biggest problem for the introverted Caleb is that he has to make two speeches in Town Hall. And, as he says, he would rather crawl to Atlanta on broken glass than to make a speech.

183 pages, Paperback

Published March 2, 2023

About the author

At 33 years old, Daniel Cole has worked as a paramedic, an RSPCA officer and most recently for the RNLI, driven by an intrinsic need to save people or perhaps just a guilty conscience about the number of characters he kills off in his writing.

He has received a three-book publishing and television deal for his debut crime series which publishers and producers describe as “pulse-racing” and “exceptional”.

Daniel currently lives in sunny Bournemouth and can usually be found down the beach when he ought to be writing book two in the Nathan Wolfe series instead.

Ragdoll is his first novel.