“A Place Called Freedom,” by Ken Follett (New York: Ballentine Books; 1995), 450 pages.
This is a story set in 1773 Britain and Virginia, of the parallel lives of an impoverished Scottish coal miner and an aristocratic daughter of the landed nobility. The coal miner, Mack McAsh, has a life of servitude as a coalminer in Scotland. His major desire in life is to be free. He first seeks a legal remedy to his position in life, but is cheated from his freedom. His only ally is Lizzie Hamlin, a free spirited and individually minded woman in an age where most women were not free spirited or independently minded. Lizzie Hamlin despises coal mining, particularly the effect of underground mining on the health of miners. Both seek to escape their respective situation, Lizzie Hamlin by marriage to a greedy, grasping landholder intent on mining her estate, while McAsh flees to London. Lizzie Hamlin also relocates to London to prepare for her wedding, while McAsh seeks honest work, but his honesty and desire for fair pay for his labor place him in opposition and conflict with corrupt businessmen that are also pillars of London’s establishment. McAsh is eventually subjected to trial based on perjured evidence, found guilty, and transported to Virginia to again work in indentured servitude along with African slaves on a tobacco plantation in Virginia, ironically, on the plantation owned by Lizzie Hamlin’s tyrannical husband. Both desire freedom from their oppressors, and eventually find an opportunity to seek it together against the back-drop of pre-revolutionary Virginia.
Follett’s book is a compelling and fast-paced story. To some readers, it might seem implausible that these parallel lives of an impoverished laborer and an aristocratic woman could become intertwined, but they do, and it’s convincing and realistically written with neither contrivances nor coincidences. Follett’s use of plot twists and turn moves the story to its final and favorable conclusion. Follett also holds little back: the book has numerous scenes describing cruel violence and intimate relations. Follett may perhaps go too far in his descriptions of these scenes; does he have do be so explicit? No curtains are drawn, and nothing left to the imagination. Accordingly, this will appeal to a wide range of readers including those that like love stories, historical pieces set in pre-revolutionary colonial America and Britain. It should also appeal to lovers of fast paced inspirational stories where the protagonists rise above their seemingly insurmountable obstacle to attains something noble and precious as freedom. Perhaps this is why it is what made this book such a phenomenal best seller.
