2023 Winner of the Tom Watson Brown Book Award"While there are a number of books that feature families of mixed African and European descent in the United States, Happy Dreams of Liberty is an invaluable addition that uncovers both the advantages and hardships that one family experienced in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Historian R. Isabela Morales tells a captivating story. A highlight of this book features the voices of the mixed-heritage Townsends through their surviving letters." -- A. B. Wilkinson, Western Historical Quarterly"Happy Dreams of Liberty is an extraordinary family saga and a profound exploration of the shifting contours of slave and free, Black and white. From an Alabama plantation across the Kansas prairies to the mining boomtowns of Colorado, the Townsends' quest for freedom, equality, and belonging in the decades surrounding the Civil War is an unforgettable odyssey, driven by possibility and haunted by dreams deferred.

Isabela Morales brilliantly projects an intimate story onto the vast canvas of the American experience." -- Daniel J. Sharfstein, author of The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America"Morales's engrossing family history is the product of old-fashioned archival research, cutting-edge analysis, and brilliant writing. With empathy and imagination, she recreates the lives of a remarkable group of men and women, born into slavery, freed in one enslaver's will. We see and feel their dreams of freedom and opportunity along with their lifelong efforts to achieve them. It's a peculiarly American story. It's anything but black and white." -- James Goodman, author of Stories of Scottsboro"In Happy Dreams of Liberty, R.

Isabela Morales skillfully peels back the multilayered narrative of the Townsends--a mixed-race family from Alabama in the late nineteenth century--for all the world to see. This is much more than a fascinating piece of history found buried deep in the archives. The Townsends' complex story of inheritance and the struggle for freedom in post-Civil War America remains relevant today as we confront the continuing legacy of the institution of slavery, the persistence of racism, and the ways that we as a society choose to memorialize the past." -- W. Ralph Eubanks, author of The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South"Captivating.While an intimate history of one family, Happy Dreams of Liberty is an important piece of scholarly work, rich in its expansiveness. A born storyteller, Morales gifts us with a captivating and multilayered history of a formerly enslaved family seeking equality. The significance of Happy Dreams of Liberty lies in Morales' recovery of a family story which might have otherwise been lost to white supremacist dominant sites of history.

Morales reclaims their voices, and their stories." -- Katherine Burns, Slavery & Abolition"Captivating and thoroughly researched, this poignant multigenerational saga gives a voice to a type of family that been traditionally absent from the historical narrative." -- Anne Ulentin, University of the Bahamas, Journal of Southern History."Happy Dreams of Liberty is a welcome addition to the scholarship on nineteenth-century emancipation and race. Its engaging prose and colorful cast of characters make it ideal to teach in undergraduate surveys, while its keen insights into the complex workings of race will appeal to scholars of the Civil War era, who will need to reckon with its important conclusions." -- Jessica Wicks-Allen, Journal of The Civil War Era"Joining a body of work that helps us understand the bittersweet and precarious place mixed-race people have occupied in the United States, Happy Dreams of Liberty is a well-written book that would be useful for anyone writing or teaching about early America, slavery/freedom, western migration, or identity." -- Alaina E. Roberts, Journal of the Early Republic.