slauderdale’s Reviews > The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative – LA Times Prize-Winning Biography of Hannah Bond, the First Black Female Novelist and Enslaved Writer > Status Update

“Stowe made explicit the Christian vision behind her novel: “There is a ladder to heaven…through which the soul rises higher and higher, refining as she goes…” [Each] of her characters occupies a different rung of the ladder, with Black characters like Topsy and Tom at the bottom.” Balderdash. Topsy, sure, but Tom is a freaking saint. Stowe would absolutely have put him at the top of the ladder.

Looks like a straight up error back on page 67. Catherine Turner was not the mother, she was the WIFE of Thomas Turner, whom she had married in 1810. I was puzzling over that forever. Like, were there two Catherine Turners, the mother-in-law, and the daughter by marriage, or was the “she“ in the passage enslaved Hannah Sr. who had somehow married the white Thomas Turner without any comment from the biographer?!

"The neighboring Turner family brought a property suit, seeking to possess Hannah Sr. as a captive claimed by Catherine Turner, the mother of Thomas Turner, whom she had married in 1810. Turner died just days after the marriage, but that did not keep the mother-in-law from claiming Hannah Sr., whose light skin and dignified bearing must have attracted John and Lewis Bond." Confused no matter how many times I reread.