Overview

Connecticut and Virginia, Spring 1861. For nearly thirty years, Elcira Cranberry has carried the name the town gave her: the Widow Murderess. She has built something remarkable in spite of it. Behind the lilacs and the potting shed at Cranberry Farm, past the modest sign for the ladies' garden club, runs one of the most active corridors of the Underground Railroad in New England. The clandestine school she operates with Deborah, a freed Black woman who came to this family as a nanny and stayed as its conscience, has taught dozens of men and women to read and write. But the war that everyone has been dreading is no longer on the horizon. It is here. When Elcira's father is injured in a mill accident in Hartford, she is pulled away from home at the worst possible moment. Meanwhile, her daughter-in-law Lorraine, raised on a Virginia plantation and never quite at peace in Connecticut, takes her three children south to visit her family. It is, she believes, the right time. She is wrong. Lorraine and her children are caught in the Baltimore rail riots as Confederate sympathizers take to the streets. When they finally reach La Bonne Vie, the Peters family plantation in Charles City, Virginia, the world she grew up in is already dressing for war. Her brother is recruiting cavalry. Her uncle boards their train south as if by coincidence and turns out to be anything but. And then there is seventeen-year-old Auggie. He arrives in Virginia thinking of himself as a visitor. His cousin Maggie shows him what his grandfather's prosperity actually costs. Auggie makes a choice. By the time August Peters' telegram reaches Cranberry Farm - ABSCONDED WITH SEVERAL OF MY SERVANTS. STOP. AUTHORITIES IN PURSUIT. - Auggie is already moving north through a series of Underground Railroad safe houses, traveling with people who have everything to lose. His younger brother C.J. finds the world of the Peters family more appealing than his older brother does. They leave on the same train. They will not be on the same road home. Back in Connecticut, an aging Colonel Townsend and his lieutenant Henry, son of Deborah, fight to keep the Underground Railroad corridor alive against increasingly aggressive slave catchers. Henry is one of the most dedicated conductors in the region and one of the most at risk for it. Elcira watches the crows and knows what they mean. The Sparrow and The Crow is the third book in the Old Cranberry Ladies Garden Club series, a multigenerational historical fiction saga set in New England following the Cranberry family from 1832 through the Civil War. The series begins with The Ghost and the Key and continues through The Widow Murderess, which was named a Claymore 2025 Top Pick in Historical Fiction. Book four, And the War Came, publishes July 4, 2026. The series is planned for six books in total. Each book stands on its own. Together, they tell the story of one woman's determination to build something the crow cannot take.

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Reviews

""Reading the The Cranberry Ladies Garden Club series, and most recently The Sparrow and The Crow, has caused me to expand my perspective on that part of our history. While fiction, it rubs up against some of my beliefs and feelings. As an African American woman who has always acknowledged the abolitionists' contributions to my history, reading this series made me realized the superficial level of my appreciation. Never did I think deeply about strong, loving, honest and committed relationships among and between black and white people as described in The Old Cranberry Ladies Garden Club. The relationship between Elcira and Deborah was complex and bound tightly by love and fear...as were most of the characters in one form or another. In The Sparrow and The Crow, the writer allows us to know the soft side of Elcira and to journey with her as she aged, shared some truths and became ill. At the same time, we saw Deborah become stronger, become more comfortable with her secrets and become more aware of unfulfilled emotions. I love these two women for what they meant to each other, how they maintained their love and protection of each other, how they traversed the racists laws of their time and their impact on all the other characters. I was sorry to say good bye to Elcira, but I look forward to Bill Cusano's next book. In addition to his incredibly rich story lines, Cusano's attention to details, factual history and customs is testimony to his integrity. Reading Cusano's books makes this reader understand better and feel the juxtaposition of hope and fear."" - Rosa Smith

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