With an extensive cast of characters, dramatic action, and findings of great significance, Combee is an exceptional work of American history

Machelle Williams delivers this sweeping, detailed history of Harriet Tubman’s work with a consistent, engaging voice that doesn’t waver…A deep dive into the history of the Civil War and Tubman’s historical leadership. Williams’s performance matches the intent of this historical work: to be clear, balanced, yet moving. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

This is a marvel of deep research.”

Remarkable new history.”

Through herculean research and cross-referencing of land, bank, US Army pension, and slavery transaction records, Fields-Black is able to name names and offer readers a sense of who these people were and what their lives were like.”

Readers will gain a deeper understanding of that era’s times and experiences, and Fields Black’s connection to one of the participants makes it a personal work as well.”

"Edda Fields-Black takes a legendary event and an iconic figure and with pathbreaking research and elegant prose gives us a striking, living, and breathing history of Black courage and freedom dreams at the dawn of emancipation." — Imani Perry, Author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, winner of the National Book Award"Thanks to her careful reading of Civil War-era documents and historical sources, some never before utilized, Edda L. Fields-Back gives eloquent voice to South Carolina's rice kingdom's enslaved men and women, including her own ancestors, and offers new insights into the experience of more prominent figures, most notably Harriet Tubman. COMBEE makes us think in new ways about the role of African Americans in the destruction of slavery, and the hopes, betrayals, and transformations that accompanied emancipation." — Eric Foner, Author of The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution"A riveting and original account of Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid, COMBEE is an absolutely essential book-not just for understanding the distant past, but for offering context and insight into tragic events in our own times, and the shadow of racism that still looms over Charleston, Charlottesville, and the nation." — Tera W. Hunter, Edwards Professor of American History and Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University"Despite boatloads of Civil War books, no one has dug more deeply into the 1863 Combahee River Raid than Edda Fields-Black. COMBEE brings that daring event alive and establishes its important place in the broader narratives of Harriet Tubman's life and the war to end slavery. Poring over pension files, trapsing through Lowcountry marshes, and tracking down plantation descendants, Fields-Black has left no pluff mud unturned in pursuing this dramatic story, weaving together the lives of her central "freedom seekers"-including her own third great grandfather-with those of Northern commanders and liberated Black Carolinians." — Peter H. Wood, Author of Black Majority: Race, Rice, and Rebellion in South Carolina, 1670-1740"Fields-Black vividly recounts one of the most dramatic events of the Civil War era, revealing Harriet Tubman and her revolutionary glory in exciting, original ways." — Marcus Rediker, University of Pittsburgh"Edda Fields-Black doesn't just bring fresh energy to Harriet Tubman's story but, from the shadow of memory, rescues a generation of people who throughout the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, fought for their freedom, crafted a new cultural, political, and economic identities, and provided a model to the nation for a new birth of equality and justice following the Civil War." — Paul Gardullo, Supervisory Museum Curator and Director of the Center for the Study of Global Slavery, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture"Fields-Black's deep archival research on the participants in the raid transforms our understanding of the event. Tubman doesn't disappear, but now the stories of the other participants emerge. In so doing, they will actually reemphasize the heroism of Tubman herself, as an apotheosis of Black (and Black women's) resistance traditions." — Edward Baptist, Cornell University"There is a gripping and well-told story about Harriet Tubman and the Civil war at the center of COMBEE, but what stands are the details around the edges of the story, about the history and daily lives of enslaved and free people on the rice plantations. I came away from the book with a realer, thicker understanding of the lives of the people of Combee." — Walter Johnson, Harvard University"In Combee, Edda Fields-Black gives an underappreciated episode in the history of Harriet Tubman, the Black freedom struggle, and the Civil War the careful and care-full treatment it deserves. More than that, this book brings to light whole worlds contained within a grain of time, lifting up the names and stories of freedom seekers whose voices still resonate powerfully today." — W. Caleb McDaniel, Author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, winner of the Pulitzer Prize