A More Perfect Union

Tammye Huf

Contents (170)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Cover design by Leah Jacobs-Gordon

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Originally published in 2020 by Myriad Editions in Oxford, England

First U.S. Trade Paperback Edition: January 2022

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Huf, Tammye, author.

Title: A more perfect union / Tammye Huf.

Description: First U.S. Trade Paperback Edition. | New York : Forever, 2022.

Identifi ers: LCCN 2021032994 | ISBN 9781538720851 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781538720844 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Virginia—History—19th century—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels. | Historical fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3608.U34965 M67 2022 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032994

ISBN: 978-1-5387-2085-1 (trade paperback), 978-1-5387-2084-4 (ebook)

E3-20211116-JV-NF-ORI

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July 1848

Chapter 1 Henry

Two dead men walking up the road. That’s what we look like, Da and me trudging out to the work gang in rags and tatters. Da hitches his threadbare trousers up. With nothing left to cling to, they’ve taken to sliding down every few steps. The string I use to tie mine still holds.

The deep pit we pass is one of ours. We dig ditches one week that we fill in the next, or build roads to nowhere, earning just enough to keep us alive. The English answer to the Irish starving.

Da and me walk three miles over dirt roads running through green hills, but when we get to the relief works station there’s a grumbling crowd of surly men.

The relief works man, over from England, holds out his hands for quiet, but no one settles down, so he shouts over the noise, “In light of the fact that your harvest will be ready in a matter of weeks, the decision has been taken to suspend the relief works program. You should all go home and wait for the harvest.”