CELIA, A SLAVE by Melton A. McLaurin...

CELIA, A SLAVE by Melton A. McLaurin (Avon: $10; 178 pp.). In 1850, Robert Newsom, a well-to-do Missouri landowner, purchased 14-year-old Celia and repeatedly raped her. Five years later--after bearing him two children--Celia reached the limits of her endurance and killed Newsom. Her trial, which raised serious Constitutional questions, took place amid the escalating violence over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Working from often fragmentary evidence, McLaurin manages to reconstruct the sensational trial in an impressive example of historical detective work, marred only by occasional anachronistic attitudes (he laments “the denial of sisterhood” among black and white women). This often moving account will fascinate anyone interested in the causes of the Civil War, women’s issues or African-American history.