Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People
Penguin Press, 2024

This year’s festival ended on Sunday, September 29, at 2:30 PM at the Cape Henlopen High School Theatre with the 2024 History Book Festival Closing Event with Tiya Miles, author of Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Penguin Press, 2024).

About the book
Harriet Tubman is, if surveys are to be trusted, one of the ten most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the $20 bill. Yet often she’s a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero — the woman who, despite being barely five feet tall, illiterate, and suffering from a brain injury, managed to escape from her own enslavement. She would return again and again to lead others north to freedom without loss of life, speak out powerfully against slavery, and then become the first American woman in history to lead a military raid, freeing some 750 people. You could almost say she’s America’s Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood.

Night Flyer changes all that. With tenderness and imaginative genius, Tiya Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman’s life into the fabric of her world. She probes the ecological reality of Tubman’s surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. What emerges is a human being whose mysticism becomes the more palpable the more we understand it — a story that offers powerful inspiration for our own times of trouble.

About the author
Tiya Miles is the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University, the author of five prize-winning works on the history of slavery and early American race relations, and a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship recipient. She was the founder and director of the Michigan-based ECO Girls program. Her book All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake was a New York Times bestseller that won the 2021 National Book Award for nonfiction.

Miles was in conversation with Linda D. Harris at the event. Harris opened the program with a presentation of Underground Railroad "code songs," accompanied by her husband, David B. Cole.

Linda D. Harris is an entrepreneur, museum curator, songwriter, entertainer, lecturer, tour consultant, and opinion writer. She serves as director of programs and events at the Harriet Tubman Museum & Educational Center in Cambridge, Maryland. 

David B. Cole is a guitarist, vocalist, entertainer, and music educator. His band, David B. Cole and Mainstreet Blues, performs worldwide. David collaborated with his wife, Linda D. Harris, on “Songs of Freedom” and a CD, “I Got Shoes,” honoring the “code songs” of the freedom seekers who traversed the Underground Railroad. 

About the event
Our Closing Event was funded through the generous support of Griswold Home Care for Sussex & Kent Counties and was presented in partnership with the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center and Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice (SDARJ).

A portion of the proceeds benefited the History Book Festival, helping to provide free literary programming for people of all ages.

Purchase the book
Please help support local independent bookstores by purchasing this book at Browseabout Books, official bookseller of the History Book Festival. Online sources and digital versions are tempting; however, supporting local brick and mortar shops helps to preserve our vibrant main streets. Drop by Browseabout, order books online, or call the store at 302-226-2665. You also may purchase a copy at biblion in Lewes.

About the Festival
The History Book Festival is the first and only book festival in the United States devoted exclusively to history. With the help of our presenting funding partners — Delaware Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, and The Lee Ann Wilkinson Group, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices | PenFed Realty — as well as our program and community partners, volunteers, and donors, the 2024 History Book Festival will be full of great discussions with authors of newly published narrative nonfiction and historical fiction. Our Keynote event is presented by Sally Mott Freeman and John K. Freeman, and our Closing event is presented by Griswold Home Care for Sussex and Kent Counties. Saturday’s Spirited Discussion, our gathering for attendees and presenters to celebrate and discuss their day, is presented by Dogfish Head Beer & Benevolence.

Special thanks to our Founding Program Partners for their continuing support: the Lewes Public Library, for event promotion and production, and Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, official bookseller of the History Book Festival. Thanks also to: the  Lewes Chamber of Commerce for event promotion, and the Cape Gazette and Delmarva Public Media, our media partners.

Additional thanks to our community partners: CAMP Rehoboth, Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center,  Historic Lewes Farmers Market, Lewes Historical Society, Rehoboth Art League, Rehoboth Beach Film Society, Seaside Jewish Community, and Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice (SDARJ).