Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz with guest Ed Cunicelli

Main Points is thrilled to welcome Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of "Dr. Mutter's Marvels," with her book "The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, M**der, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America." It's a rousing, true adventure that roams from Christiana, DE to Lancaster County to Philadelphia's Society Hill. She'll be joined by guest host and award-winning photographer Ed Cunicelli, who has worked with descendents of the Christiana Rebellion.

This event has several ticket options:

Bring Your Curiosity (free, cause we KNOW you'll buy the book after you hear this)

Curiosity With a Book - buy the book when you register

Attend with the Friend You Share Books With - two seats with one copy included

The event takes place in our lower level event space.

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 M**der, 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.”

It’s a story that whisks readers from the quiet farmlands of Lancaster County—where a self-emancipated man named William Parker, whom legend had it bullets could not K*ll, rallied his neighbors to ride out each night to battle the slavecatchers who stalked their countryside—to Philadelphia’s genteel Society Hill, where socialite Harriet Forten Purvis had the ear of the mayor (and a cellar filled with fugitives). It’s stylish, propulsive, intimately human tale of bravery, ingenuity, and hope—and of ordinary people with little in common who came together to stand against injustice…and won.