Kirti Mutatkar and Paige Macias discuss Ilyon Woo's meticulously researched account of Ellen and William Craft's daring eighteen forty-eight escape from slavery. The Story: Ellen, three quarters white, disguised herself as a white male slaveholder traveling with her "slave"—actually her husband William. Their audacious journey from Georgia took them to Boston, England, and eventually back to America after the Civil War. Key Themes: History Beyond Textbooks - Reveals pre-Civil War complexities, the abolitionist movement, and the Fugitive Slave Act's impact that standard education misses. Even "free" Northern states weren't safe for escaped slaves. Dehumanizing Economics - Slaves were balance sheet assets. A sixty-year-old: zero value. A five-year-old: worth a fortune. Women of childbearing age: valuable for future "property." Ellen's own half-sister was her mistress. Identity and The One Drop Rule - Ellen looked white but identified as Black, as a slave. Being called "the white slave" annoyed her—that wasn't her reality. Resilience - Despite freedom, they faced constant setbacks: house burned, business failed, family lost. But they always got back up, kept searching, kept building. Normalized Horror - How could Ellen's half-sister own her sister? She was trapped in an economic system with little power. This raises uncomfortable questions: what are we normalizing today that future generations will condemn? Historical Divisions - You have to go back to the Civil War to find America as divided as today. The comparison is sobering. The Author's Approach: Korean American researcher Ilyon Woo brings meticulous detail and transparency about sources. When documentation is sparse, she acknowledges it—this honesty strengthens the narrative. KBC Book Radar: Brain Fizz Factor: four out of five - Rich detail, compelling narrative; some sections drag Bookshelf Worthy: High - Stays with you, connects to current events Why Read: Four hundred pages. First section reads like a thriller; second provides historical context. There's also a documentary for those wanting the story without reading. Truth more compelling than fiction, with themes resonating deeply today. Credits: Host and Creator: Kirti Mutatkar Guest: Paige Macias Show Editor: Aniket Mutatkar Logo & Design: Smitha Rau
Kirti Mutatkar and Paige Macias discuss Ilyon Woo's extensively researched account of Ellen and William Craft's daring 1848 escape from slavery.
The Story: Ellen, who was 3 quarters white, disguised herself as a white male slaveholder traveling with her "slave"—actually her husband William. Their journey from Georgia took them to Boston, then England, and eventually back to America after the Civil War. The book covers their entire lives from escape to death.
Key Themes:
History Beyond Textbooks - The book reveals pre-Civil War political complexities, abolitionist movements, and the Fugitive Slave Act's impact that standard education glosses over. Even in "free" Northern states, escaped slaves faced extreme danger, making true freedom impossible in America.
Slavery's Dehumanizing Economics - Slaves were assets on balance sheets. A 60-year-old had zero value; a 5-year-old was worth a fortune. Women of childbearing age were particularly valuable because their children became property. Ellen's own half-sister was her mistress—same father, different treatment.
The One Drop Rule - Ellen looked white but was enslaved because of "1 drop" of Black blood. She identified as Black, as a slave. Being called "the white slave" annoyed her—that wasn't her identity.
Resilience Through Setbacks - Despite freedom, their house burned down, William's Africa business venture ended in debt, but they always got back up. They kept searching for lost family members, kept building, kept persevering.
International Perspective - The abolitionist movement in Britain provided crucial support. The World's Fair scene where Ellen and William walk arm-in-arm as free people in England symbolizes triumph. American slavery had ripple effects across the pond.
Normalized Horror - Ellen's half-sister owned her sister. How? She was trapped in an economic system with little power as a woman in that era. This raises uncomfortable questions: what are we normalizing today that future generations will find horrifying?
Historical Divisions - You have to go back to the Civil War to find America as divided as today. The North/South moral divide was irreconcilable without war. The comparison to modern political division is sobering.
The Author's Approach: Ilyon Woo, a Korean American researcher, brings meticulous detail and transparency about what she knows versus infers. When documentation is sparse (like William's time in Africa), she says so. This honesty strengthens the narrative.
Historical Connections: Paige connected the book to "Two Years Before the Mast"—author Henry Dana later became a lawyer in events related to Ellen and William's story.
KBC Book Radar:
Why Read: About 400 pages. First section (the escape) reads like a thriller—suspenseful, well-documented since Ellen and William wrote about it themselves. Second half provides historical context. There's also a movie/documentary for those wanting the story without reading.
A meticulously researched story proving truth is more compelling than fiction, with themes that resonate deeply today.
Credits: Host and Creator: Kirti Mutatkar
Guest: Paige Macias
Show Editor: Aniket Mutatkar
Logo & Design: Smitha Rau
Paige Macias & Kirti Mutatkar discuss "Master Slave Husband Wife" by Ilyon Woo
Kirti Mutatkar: I am really excited today because I have Paige in my office today and we are discussing a book that we just recently talked about—was it 2, 2 weeks ago? We discussed this book, it's called "Master Slave Husband Wife," by—how did you say it? Ilyon Woo?
Paige Macias: Ilyon Woo.
Kirti Mutatkar: And this is a book recommended by me to the book club. And we had mixed—I think most of us liked the book, but 1 of the things that Paige said that day was, I give this 5, 5 plus. It's like, we have a rating of 1 to 5, and Paige said this is a 5. So why did you think it was a 5, Paige?
Paige Macias: Well, I thought it was a marvelous book in a number of different ways. First of all, it covered material that I know I didn't learn in school. So when we're in school, high school, wherever, we learn about the Civil War and the history of the Civil War, but we learned it at a pretty high level. And I felt like this book went into more details about what was happening pre-Civil War era, the political complexities of the time. And on top of that, it was just a really good story about these 2 slaves who were able to escape from the south into the north. And how their journey transpired, escaping, and then what their life was like after. And it covered their life all the way really to the end of their life. And I just found those 2 things to be really compelling.
Kirti Mutatkar: That is, that was really good. Usually I would've said, can we give the little synopsis? So welcome to KBC, Kirti's Book Club, Paige, and you actually were right on, you gave a synopsis of what the book is all about and that is so true when you think of history and what you were saying earlier, when you are taught history, it's slightly, what you learn from it is so different than what you get from some of these books. And the author, I think, is a researcher because she goes in the depth of what happens during that time. So you just, you understand what the lay of the land is during that time. So that was really, really interesting. I really enjoyed that part.
Paige Macias: That was really, well, like I said, the story was very compelling and I really enjoyed that. But I just love learning about all these other characters that were prominent at the time. Some of them were good, some of them weren't. William Wells Brown, he was a very interesting character. People in the book club, by the way, some of them said, oh, they did too much detail on him, but I had never heard of him before, right? So now I had an appreciation of who he was. They also talked about Henry Clay, Daniel Webster—Daniel Webster, not very prominent politician at the time. Not necessarily, let's say in history's view the most moral or upstanding individual at the end of it. But I just love the detail of it. And again, like I said, the story was really good about how they escaped out of the south.
Kirti Mutatkar: Yeah, and it makes you think as they're going through their journey and how they're escaping and some of these places that you go visit, because I was in Nashville when we were reading this book, and you kind of then think of all that happened to the slaves down there and the markets and how they were sold, and it just kind of, you know, you read these books and these are hard books to read sometimes when you see that human beings did these things to fellow human beings. So yeah, it gets you. Like, was that really—I mean this is—is it fiction? Sometimes you wonder.
Paige Macias: Well, I mean, clearly slavery is horrifying. And especially slavery in the south. Yeah. Because it was racially based. Obviously slavery has been around historically for thousands of years, but southern slavery was very racially based. And in fact the main character, Ellen, she was a slave, even though she was 3 quarters white and looked white, but it was the 1 drop rule, which seems kind of crazy to us today, but that's how they viewed it at the time. That was another thing I appreciated about the book actually. Although it is hard to read, the author did do some nice descriptions of slave markets, the way slave families were ripped apart. Clearly because that happened to both the characters in the book and yes, you got an appreciation of really how horrible things were. So we did get through that.
Kirti Mutatkar: Yeah. The other side of it right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing that when they are accounting for the slaves and they talk about them being assets and how they say a 60-year-old is what cost like 0 on the books and a 5-year-old is worth a lot because any kids born to a slave are a property of the owner. Those right—oh my God. Crazy stuff.
Paige Macias: A woman of childbearing age is an asset because she can have children, which builds your asset. So these aspects of slavery, you know, we don't think about them too much today, but they really, really were just horrible. And the fact that the South was so dug in to this point of view—clearly there was a lot of economics involved because slaves had value. They relied on them to produce all their goods in the south, primarily cotton. But we look back on that now and we just, it's hard to believe that people were really treated like that.
Kirti Mutatkar: Yep. 1 of the things that when I—the reason I started KBC or I do the roundtables is when you read these books, right, and you kind of reflect on them, or I hear other people's kind of what, how they saw the book. It sometimes changes the way you have a narrative in your head, right? And you start thinking, huh. I was thinking in this way now, after reading this book or after discussing this book with Paige, hmm, maybe I feel a little different about the world out there. Did that happen to you with this book?
Paige Macias: Well, I definitely had some different perspectives on that time in history. I was—I don't, maybe the word impressed is the wrong word, but I was gratified at least to see how much abolitionist activity was going on at the time, especially in light of the Fugitive Slave Law, which essentially created extreme penalties for people that helped anybody that could have been a slave in the free North. So that was kind of interesting to me. I don't think there's a lot of discussion about that when we study the Civil War and history. It's mostly focusing around, you know, the war and the freeing of the slaves. So I was gratified to see that. I was also really intrigued when, eventually, and I know we're giving a little bit of the story away—
Kirti Mutatkar: It's okay because some people might not read it, so—
Paige Macias: —that they eventually moved to England. And I was really interested that there was a whole perspective on American slavery in Britain and that there were abolitionists in Britain as well, that support helped support their journey. So that was amazing to me that American slavery really sort of had a ripple effect. Maybe not around the world, but certainly across, as they call the pond into other countries. And I found that fascinating.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right. And actually they talk about that, right, when they land on the England shores, English shores, they say, this is where it all started. We are coming a full cycle. But people in England had gotten away from that. Yes. And it had stayed, it had come to the US and America and now they are—okay. This is where it all started. Right.
Paige Macias: Britain had done away with slavery prior to America, except of course in the Caribbean, where they—
Kirti Mutatkar: And India.
Paige Macias: —and India where they had a lot of economic interests. So, yeah, although England, you know, felt, you know, they were sort of doing the right thing by getting rid of it, and they were, they didn't completely get rid of it. So definitely had a deep economic impact that was really hard for, you know, America and Britain to get rid of. And in fact, really the war was inevitable, I think, in terms of getting rid of slavery.
Kirti Mutatkar: Because there was so many different thoughts and all, there's so much confusion around what was right, what was wrong, what was legal, what was not, and all kinds of stuff. Yes. That needed to happen to get us where we wanted. We are right now, today.
Paige Macias: Well, there was a whole, you know, very moralistic part of the Northern States. They talked about the Quakers. Were very supportive of runaway slaves, that felt very vehemently against slavery. They just couldn't see it as part of what the country should be going forward. I think that just tore apart, you know, the 2 sides, just, there was really no reconciliation. Right?
Kirti Mutatkar: Right.
Paige Macias: So that was the backdrop that this book was set against, which I, which is, I enjoyed learning that because I learned things I didn't know, I hadn't learned in school. And it led me to kind of look up other kinds of information about that time.
Kirti Mutatkar: The 1, the Canada thing too, right? Oh, yes. Because we talked about that. People moved from Boston. They went to Canada because that's where they sought freedom. Freedom.
Paige Macias: That's where they were truly free because of the Fugitive Slave Act. They couldn't be free. And in fact, that's what led Ellen and William to leave America and go to Britain because they could not be free, truly free.
Kirti Mutatkar: So when you read history books, right, and they tell you like the facts, they tell you this is what happened and the Fugitive Act and all that stuff, but this humanizes the story a little bit, so you get to hear what a day-to-day—what did that happen? Ellen being white, right? I mean, born to a Black slave—African American. Oh, how do I say it? Should I say—
Paige Macias: Black family. A Black father and a—
Kirti Mutatkar: A Black father and a Black father, and—
Paige Macias: I'm sorry, a white father—
Kirti Mutatkar: But a slave—
Paige Macias: —a slave mom. Mom. But she was half white.
Kirti Mutatkar: Correct? She was half white, but she did not identify herself as half white or she didn't. It annoyed her that people were like saying, oh, let's go look at the white slave, right? Yes. That didn't—
Paige Macias: Ellen identified as being Black because I think she identified as being a slave. Yeah. And that really, and William, of course, was a slave, and that was her identity. Yes. It annoyed her. They called her the white slave.
Kirti Mutatkar: Yeah. 1 of the things that the author does very well, sometimes she's not sure, she says, hmm, maybe Ellen did not go on these speaking tours later because maybe she felt this way. We cannot be absolutely sure. That was the reason. So the author kind of, again, maybe being more a researcher or something is giving us an idea of what somebody might be feeling. But then she says, you know what? Maybe this happened. Maybe this did not happen. Maybe she felt this way, did not feel that way. I actually liked that too about the book.
Paige Macias: I thought it was really interesting that their escape journey was very well documented because Ellen and William themselves wrote a book about it.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right.
Paige Macias: So she had pretty good documents around that. What happened in that journey, and I think there were others that had written about them as well, but when she got into their later life, she didn't have as much information and I really appreciated that the author was very clear about acknowledging when she had sources that were very specific and when she didn't, when she had limited information about a situation, for instance, at the end of the book, giving it away again. Yeah. Yep. William goes back to Africa. But there's really very little documentation really about what he did there. They know he did some things, but they didn't have a lot of information to know what he did, what he thought about it, you know, all the activities. So, but she was clear about that.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right. And when he talks about going to Africa and stuff, what, 1 of the things that struck me was they led a very hard, they led hard lives, right? They escaped. They got to Boston. They had friends. They enjoyed this whole thing too, but everything they tried after they were free and they came back to the US—the house was burned down or the thing that they built, they go to Africa. We don't know if they were successful or not. Right. No records of it. I think some things he was—
Paige Macias: Well, he came back with a lot of debt.
Kirti Mutatkar: He did come back with a lot of debt.
Paige Macias: So clearly whatever he tried to do, maybe he did some things that worked out, but clearly the main thing he tried to do didn't work out.
Kirti Mutatkar: But they got up. I think the thing inspiring about them was anytime they were put down, they're like, okay, let's get up again. Like persevere. And they had the grit to do it.
Paige Macias: Yeah. I also liked it. Well, they had a lot of relatives, you know, they knew they had half brothers and sisters and obviously mother and father, but they didn't know where they all went. Right. And after they had been freed and the civil war was over and they had an option to even try to find them. They didn't really know where they all had gone, but I liked that they tried to find them and I liked the fact that there was some closure at the end when Ellen finds her mother and is able to reunite. And I just thought that was really, really nice.
Kirti Mutatkar: I really like that too. And she comes to the—and I think she follows the same path right, the way Ellen escapes and then she goes to England. And that was really nice that I like that too. If it's made into a movie, that'll be my favorite scene.
Paige Macias: And what a convoluted path they had to take to get out of Georgia, because all the railroads didn't connect and then they had to take different boats and get off and, you know, it just made their journey a lot more arduous and risky.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right. And the whole thing where she's acting like a white guy, a man who has a slave, right? And how that people kind of treat them and how she brings him in, even with the food and all the stuff. Meanwhile, the husband and wife and they're pretending to be a slave and a master. That was interesting. That was very interesting.
Paige Macias: Hence the title.
Kirti Mutatkar: Hence the title. So if I am looking at reading the books, so like in our book club we have the 1 to 5, right? So in, at here I have something called a Fizz Factor. So if it's a flat soda, right? We've read some books, which you read a book and like, oh. I don't think it's going anywhere. It's a flat soda, but some books get our brains kind of, it's like, you know, the things that like start connecting in our brains. So from 1 to 4, where would you, where would you rate this book? Where would it lie for you?
Paige Macias: Oh, well, I would, I mean, I would give it a 4 Fizz, although just a 4 factor.
Kirti Mutatkar: 4. Factor 4 Fizz is good. 4.
Paige Macias: Although there were some comments in the previous discussion that there were parts of the book that were pretty dry and they dragged on a little bit. That was true and I did find that as well. I guess she was trying to be thorough. Right about all the things that were going on in that time that were impacting Ellen and William. So for some people that might drag the number down a little bit.
Kirti Mutatkar: A bit. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Paige Macias: But I just found the whole complexity of the time, the way she portrayed it against this really fabulous story. I found it to be absolutely fascinating and I think it was a wonderful book. So 4 for me.
Kirti Mutatkar: It was the same for me, and I was 1 of them who said it was longer than it needed to be, because some parts are like, okay, don't give me so much detail. Let me get through this. Right? But at the same time, I would also give it a 4 because it got your, like the fizz in your brain got triggered. Right. And you're thinking, oh my God, this is like, this was happening and you're connecting things. And the book we read, I think you are the 1 who connected back to 1 of the other books that we had read. He meets, what's his name? Dana—
Paige Macias: Oh yes. Fascinating. We had read the book "Two Years Before the Mast" by William Henry, I think it's Henry Dana. And after Dana had finished his journey on basically this ship going around the horn to California, he went back to Boston, became a lawyer, and he ended up being a lawyer in 1 of these events.
Kirti Mutatkar: Events, right. And—
Paige Macias: I had no idea that all these people were connected.
Kirti Mutatkar: I know. It's like none of us connected that except you. Amazing. That was awesome. So from that, it's definitely a 4. And the other thing I use on this book club is on a shelf. So where would you place it? For example, sometimes you read a book and you say, okay, I'm done, and you donate it or whatever. Sometimes you want to give it to a lot of people. You are like, okay, you know what? This is a great book. Read this book. Sometimes it sits next to your bed because it's such a great book that you feel yourself reading it over and over again. So from that standpoint, where does the book lie?
Paige Macias: Well, I definitely would recommend it to people for sure. It's definitely worth a read. I think it's a book. Let me put it this way. To me, I think it's a book that I keep thinking about. Sometimes you read a book, you just want to read a fluffy book. That's great, you know, but you read it, then you kind of let it go. You don't remember it. You know, but this book is 1 book that I've, I've continued to think about because the story is so interesting. The times are so interesting, the times were so impactful, even rolling forward into our times today. So, you know, I don't know that I would put it by my nightstand and keep reading it because now I've absorbed the story. But definitely it's a book that I continue thinking—aspects of the book I continue to think about.
Kirti Mutatkar: That is so true. And then you observe something or you see something in the news and you start connecting it back to the book. Exactly. So 1 of our readers in the book, Debbie, she mentioned that anytime she saw, after reading this book, she sees an athlete or somebody and she gets thinking about, what was your life like for your great grandfather or your great grandmother? Are there people in your family that may be lost somewhere. Don't even know. There's some connections out there. Yeah. So it's interesting to think in those terms, right? It's like, yeah, it stays with you when you start connecting things. It's like me going to Nashville and kind of feeling that, oh, they were here, right? They walked this land and what did they go through? So it's very interesting. It stays with you for sure.
Paige Macias: I think that's a reality of American life today. For Black Americans. They clearly, clearly have this history that was stark and difficult and, yes, maybe not all of them want to look back and dig through it, but it's definitely there.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right, right. And sometimes it's good for us to look at this, right? Some people look at history and say, I don't want to know about this. I'm just moving forward. But it's always good to reflect back and see what are, as human beings, what are we capable of doing? Because that's a very good lesson for always, for us to have.
Paige Macias: 1 aspect of this that I thought a lot about because it came up in the book club—Lynn kept saying, I don't know how humans could have done this to other humans. She just finds that a very difficult concept to understand, which clearly from our perspective today, makes sense. I mean, some of the things the slaves endured, practices that were common were just inhuman. Right? But you have to kind of put yourself back in that time and think about it in those terms, if you want to try to understand what people of that time, why they were doing this. For example, Ellen's half-sister, who was her mistress, Eliza, I think her name was. How could she have had her sister as a slave? I mean, to us that's, I can't imagine that. But she was caught up in an economic system. She herself had probably very little power. Yeah. She was married to a prominent, moderately wealthy individual. But what could she do? Right? She was a woman in that time. She couldn't just say, oh, I want to free her. I don't agree with this. And then where would Ellen have gone anyway? That would've been another problem. So the people that were caught up in this were in some ways, victims of their own time. I'm not trying to excuse and say, oh yeah, this was fine, because clearly it wasn't. But they didn't have enough perspective, enough vision to—many of them. Obviously the abolitionists looked at the world very differently. They couldn't wrap their head around the other perspective of having all these individuals free.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right. Some of them, they—
Paige Macias: They couldn't see how to see that as a future. It took the war. It took the destruction of the south and all the violence and fighting to make them realize they had to.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right, right. I think some of these things got normalized.
Paige Macias: Yes.
Kirti Mutatkar: And got immune to it. Yeah, right. You're treating human beings like cattle and yes. And yeah. I think that's what happened to a few of them. But to even think about, her dad is right there. Exactly. And she looks like her dad and she gets treated—like 1's daughter gets treated different and the other—
Paige Macias: I know. Treated different. We just can't conceptualize it.
Kirti Mutatkar: Exactly. It's like, it's like, yeah. It just, like I said earlier, it feels more like fiction than like something that really happened. It's like, did somebody make this up? Is it really aware? But there's so many stories like that, right. In history, we have read books in World War 2 and others where you look at it and think, huh? Is this possible? But the other thing, actually 1 of the team, our book club members was saying, what about today? Maybe some things are happening, maybe we are normalized and we are looking at it and saying this is normal. But maybe later, after a couple years it's like, how could these people do this? Right? Yeah. So maybe things are happening today, I—
Paige Macias: Well, clearly we are sort of normalized into how we live today. But I did read a comment when I was looking at other information on this book that said that you have to go back to the Civil War to find a time as divided as we are today.
Kirti Mutatkar: Yeah.
Paige Macias: Yeah. So that just goes to show how divided politics are right now. Now that being said, I'm an optimist, so my hope is that as we move forward in time, we can somehow come together or reconcile some of these things because, you know, of course we hopefully wouldn't have another civil war because people are very divided in their opinions. Yeah.
Kirti Mutatkar: They are, they are. That is so true. And it's sad. It's actually sad sometimes when you think of some of the things that you hear in news or what's happening and it saddens you a little bit. Because yeah.
Paige Macias: Yes.
Kirti Mutatkar: This is such an amazing country and that hopefully doesn't spoil any of that. Yes. So it is. Anything else Paige, that we missed? Do you feel any other themes or ideas that came up that day or came up for you when you read this book?
Paige Macias: Well, it was interesting to me that the author is a Korean American. Yeah. That was interesting. I don't know why that intrigued me. I felt like maybe she just had the ability to maybe set aside her own personal histories that maybe you or I or other people that have had generations in America would have. So, and maybe that enabled her to find all the facts and write it in sort of a sort of neutral way to the best—
Kirti Mutatkar: She's not emotional about it.
Paige Macias: Yeah, exactly. I mean, other than how you personally react when you read some of this stuff because it's pretty awful. But I was kind of intrigued with that.
Kirti Mutatkar: Yeah, that was interesting. And to see—yeah, I don't know why, but I felt the same thing when I looked at the—when you read the book, actually, it was really interesting. I actually did not even look at her name until later. I actually just read the book and looked at her name later. I'm like, ah, that doesn't seem like somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.
Paige Macias: It, I just thought it was interesting. Clearly she found it, it's a very interesting story and was able to find very interesting research and create this amazing nonfiction story about this couple. But anyway, I just found that sort of intriguing.
Kirti Mutatkar: Yeah, but you know what, when you think about it from an immigrant standpoint or somebody who's grown up here as the author is, it's her history too. So maybe she's looking at it, this is my country now. This is my history and that's her history—the history of the US is the history for her. So reflecting it back, 1 of the things that she also does, which is very cool, is she brings in even writers and poets and other people who lived during that time and how that impacted. And she talks about, I think, again, you brought this up in your discussion at the book club, the thing in England that happens. And I'm trying to remember where, oh—
Paige Macias: Yeah, it was the World's Fair.
Kirti Mutatkar: The World Fair. That's—
Paige Macias: Fascinating. Another interesting historical event that happened simultaneously with Ellen and William living in England, and it was interesting to hear the author describe the World's Fair and the American booth and how it had a big eagle over it and America complained because they wanted more space but they really couldn't fill it. But it was also an event that was sort of, I don't know if a triumph maybe for Ellen and William in that they were able to go in there arm in arm and walk as free people through this world exhibition and just the way really it ought to be.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right. Right, right. That was interesting. So she has a lot of those interesting things in there.
Paige Macias: Yes, exactly.
Kirti Mutatkar: Exactly. Yeah. So if somebody doesn't have the time to read the book, it could be a little intimidating. Now that we've said it's a lot, it's about 400 pages and has, I think the first couple pages is actually the story of how they escape, which is very interesting. But the second half also kind of connects it back to what happens. So if somebody doesn't read the book but just listens to this podcast and wants to join the roundtable. Would you recommend that they still do that? Because is there a lot of themes in the book that we can discuss in a roundtable without reading?
Paige Macias: Oh, definitely. Yeah. I think that we talked about a number of themes. Only part of the book really is about the story of their escape. The other part is about what was happening around that time in the pre-Civil War era and actually Civil War occurs while they're in England and then they come back. So certainly, and I think they could learn something. The other thing they could do, apparently there is a movie or documentary maybe on their escape. Their escape. Yeah. So that would give you another perspective. I haven't seen it. Yeah, maybe. I think I'd like to go back and see it now. Yeah. But that would give another perspective on this story. So yeah.
Kirti Mutatkar: That's a good point. Because actually the first part, it seems like a movie or a story. Correct. And it's very exciting and lots of suspense and lots of things that you like—ooh, are they really going to escape? Exactly. Are they going to get caught? That, you know, kind of, they made it because you know the story a little bit, but that's the fun part. That's so true.
Paige Macias: Right. And you could just read that part of the book. Yeah. Because that's a great story for the discussion.
Paige Macias: Yeah. And that's where she has the most documentation.
Kirti Mutatkar: Right. So Paige, this has been really fun and look forward to doing—I know we talked about, when we talked about this book, we talked about Erik Larson and his books. Those are my favorite books too, and I know you love those books too. So maybe we can do a round 2 with Erik Larson and 1 of his books. That'll be awesome.
Paige Macias: That'd be great.
Kirti Mutatkar: So thank you for joining me on KBC and looking forward to joining—the people who listen to this will have them join the roundtable discussion when we do this, so thank you.
Paige Macias: Well, thank you for asking me. I really enjoyed it. Yep. Alright.
Kirti Mutatkar: Thanks.