Behind the Scenes - Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (Unabridged) (Elizabeth Keckley).

Behind The Scenes, by Elizabeth Keckle, describes in depth the life of women who have been forced into service in the Whitehouse, both before and after the Civil War. These women were chattel slaves that had been freed but were still bound by law to their owners. They were barred from entering society and society resented them as well.

Keckle shares stories about Mary Anna Quarles, her "mission" to educate the slaves and teach them the Bible, and the toll it took on her life. She describes not only the harsh living conditions but also the complex emotional experiences she experienced when freeing others who were enslaved.

Through these pages, she also shares accounts of other women slaveowners, their day-to-day struggles with politics and being head slaves. Some of the things she discusses range from being limited in movement or even freedom of speech, to slave auctions, birth control and romance.

This is a powerful book that shows us the oppression and hardships individuals faced in their attempts to shake off the shackles of slavery. It's definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you're willing to hear the stories of those who faced the hardest yet most humane path out of slavery, Behind The Scene is a

This volumes contains, for the first time in English, the entire diary of a woman for nearly three decades from her childhood through marriage, then the South, where she experienced the horrors of slavery, and after the Civil War, an interminable coalition of trusteeships, temporary homes, adoption cases, followed by a four-year spell at the White House as a member of President Lincoln's household staff, and eventually the treacherous captivity of Rebels Raiders, where Elizabeth would lose her baby. The document is "bordering on things which only the most shortsighted or ungrateful human eye could possibly neglect," remarks historian Elizabeth Foote Grynner.