A Fugitive in Walden

In 1845, Samuel Long, a young black slave in his twenties, managed to escape from his master's plantation in Virginia. After taking the “underground railroad” – a network of people who, from the Southern States, help escaped slaves to reach Canada, he arrives at Lake Walden and binds with the circle of transcendentalist philosophers: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Lloyd Garrison and many more. At their side, he will then try to (re)build himself and to tame his new condition as a free man. But this meeting is also the confrontation of two worlds: that of Samuel Long made of suffering and revolt, and that of the white intellectuals who, if they support the abolition of slavery, nevertheless find themselves trapped in their own privileges and contradictions. Surprising and above all very sensitive portraits of Henry David Thoreau and his colleagues emerge, through the eyes of Samuel. Translated from English (United States) by Brice Matthieussent The encounter of a young black slave with Henry David Thoreau, which reveals the mechanisms of racism and privilege.