Uncle Tom's Cabin

When a Kentucky farmer falls into debt he sells two of the people he holds as slaves: Uncle Tom, a devout and patient man, and the small son of Eliza Harris, who runs away with the child that night and crosses the frozen Ohio River on the ice. The novel follows both paths, Eliza's flight north with her husband George and Tom's journey south down the Mississippi, through the gentle household of the St. Clares and their daughter Eva to the plantation of the brutal Simon Legree, who has Tom beaten to death for refusing to betray others.

Harriet Beecher Stowe published the novel in 1852; it became the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and helped turn Americans against slavery, though some of its portraits of Black characters are now read as stereotypes. John Greenman reads it alone, in about eighteen hours.