Maybe you seen a movie or show that link together a group of people that from the outside view a connection just doesn't seem possible. In the hands of good writer though a story can be fashioned where the impossible connection made possible.We are presented with several generation and their Transatlantic journey. We have famous and for the most part forgotten pair of Airmen who made the first flight well before Charles Lindbergh in what if you look at the photo was crazy wonderful.
Jumping back in time we move to a story of Frederick Douglass having made an escape to Europe to raise awareness and money for the abolitionist movement. A man who has seen the worst of men through Slavery seeing the Great famine and it shock even him.
The Heart of the story and the best part in my opinion is that of Lily Duggan, her story of being propelled to seek freedom after seeing Douglass, she make her escape to American and we follow her through the Civil war and after. Her story is at times crushing and all in all wonderful.
I won't go on with different story but the Prose are wonderful, brilliant and at points moved me so.
I will leave you with a quote by one of the later generation reletive of Lily, that still haunts me
"There are times—months later, years later, a decade later even—that it strikes Lottie how very odd it is to be abandoned by language, how the future demands what should have been asked in the past, how words can escape us with such ease, and we are left, then, only with the pursuit."