The Third Mrs. Galway: A Novel

In 1835 Utica, New York, newlywed Helen Galway discovers two people who have escaped enslavement hiding in a shack behind her husband's house. She faces a moral crisis: report the fugitives as a dutiful wife, or defy convention and help them. Within her home, Helen is shadowed by the memory of the previous Mrs. Galway, recently deceased. Her husband, recovering from a riding accident, is attended by a doctor with questionable motives. Maggie, formerly enslaved by the Galway family and freed when New York abolished slavery eight years prior, manages the household. Abolitionist activists arrive in Utica to establish the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, but local newspapers denounce them as traitors to the Constitution. As antislavery agitation intensifies, the household and community face dangerous personal and political choices. The novel explores the political, class, and racial upheavals of the era through its cast of characters.