GWI is thrilled to welcome NY Times bestselling author,  Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz to Kingston to discuss her new book, The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and the Ordinary Folks Who Saved America. 

Join us for a conversation with Cristin, moderated by Micah and Erica Brown, followed by an audience Q & A and book signing. Limited copies of the book will be available upon registration and day of the event, courtesy of Rough Draft.  

The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker traces the incredible true story of the “Cristiana Riot” and how a community-led resistance changed the course of history.

For fans of Master Slave Husband Wife and Django Unchained comes the extraordinary forgotten story of an event known in its day as “the first shots of the Civil War,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Mütter’s Marvels.

About the Book:

The year, 1851. The place, a Quaker farming community turned Underground Railroad stronghold, where a Maryland enslaver had journeyed in pursuit of four men who’d fled his plantation years before. In a few hours, he’d be dead…and twenty-seven men from the village of Christiana would be rounded up and put on trial. Not for his murder, but for  treason—for waging war against the United States, at a time when it was a crime against the government to obstruct an enslaver looking to reclaim his “property.”

This is story of what happened in Christiana that September morning—and in the ensuing “trial of the century,” which saw the president himself advise the prosecution on strategy and a sitting congressman serve as lead attorney for the defense. But  The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker is also a much larger tale, one spanning decades, following a whole startlingly diverse community of abolitionists in their fight to convince their fellow Americans of the subversive idea that now found itself on trial: that the nation ought to live up the ideals it was founded on, and respect all men as equals.

About Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz:

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is a  New York Times best selling poet and historian. She is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently  Against Vanishing (2025),  How to Love the Empty Air (2018), and  The Year of No Mistakes (2013), which was named the Book of the Year for Poetry by the Writers’ League of Texas.