Saturday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m.—SHREWSBURY—Joan Aleshire, Vermont author and founder of SAGE, an organization that supports sustainable agricultural education and the arts, will be at the Shrewsbury Library to read from her new novel, “Belfield,” out now from Green Writers Press.
The novel is based on an incident in the life of Charles Willson Peale, Early American portraitist, Revolutionary War veteran, inventor, museum founder, and farmer. Although he opposed slavery publicly, Peale accepted an enslaved family into his household as payment for a debt. He freed the husband and wife after a few years, but held their son, Moses Williams, until he was 26, and taught him to be a profile cutter, working in his Philadelphia natural history museum. In imagining the Peale family’ s life on an 18th-century farm, the book explores ethics and inclusion: the contradictions at the heart of this country.
Copies will be available for sale at the reading or at Bookshop.org.
Submitted
Joan Aleshire
