I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl
by Joyce Hansen
Middle grade · ages 10–14 · grades 5–9 · 720L · 2011
Why we'd hand it over
Sparse, honest, and quietly devastating—Hansen lets Patsy's voice and choices carry the weight of Reconstruction and emancipation without didacticism, making the era humanly real in a way textbooks cannot.