One Hundred Pearls

Barry Cole originated the idea for this historically based novel many years ago after a trip to a mass grave in Central Alabama at Tannehill State Park. Roupe's Valley Furnaces (later Tannehill State Park) relied on the forced labor of nearly six hundred enslaved human beings to manufacture pig iron under hellish conditions. Molten lava was forged into bullets and cannonballs used by the Confederates to keep them enslaved. An inferno of fire and brimstone blazed a trail for Cole to encounter the mythical Sadie, the novel's protagonist, who lived one hundred years and turned the tables on her slaveholding captors. Sadie's remarkable story embodies the lived experience of a silent multitude buried under unchiseled rocks with no names. Her powerful voice and vision offer a lens into their forgotten stories and chastises any attempt to rewrite the bloody history of American Slavery.