The Red Spoke

Stone Mountain, GA The Red Spoke is a novel about a white Southerner and his former slave who become stealth abolitionist. Buck Jernigan, his wife Betty Gail, their twins, Norman and Mia and their two free Negros, Isaac and Sally, live in the small hamlet of Stone Mountain, Georgia. Unknown to Betty Gail and Sally, Buck and Isaac become stealth abolitionists freeing nearly fifty local area slaves. Buck and Isaac are deeply committed and submerged in the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada. This was accomplished, in part, with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. Buck and Isaac meet with Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave and a leader and worker on the Underground Railroad. She made 13 trips to the South, helping to free over 70 people. “Buck, did you ever think about sin?” Buck replies, “I think about it all of the time. Why do you ask?” Isaac continues, “Sin is man-made. It sure would be a nice world if’n man did not sin.” Buck looks at Isaac, “Never thought of it that way, Isaac, but you are absolutely correct.”

The novel is about a white Southerner and his former slave who become secret abolitionist before and during the War between the States. The setting is in the small hamlet of Stone Mountain, GA. and begins with a secret message notifying a slave on their plan to help he and his wife escape to Canada. There are murders that occur during the exploits of the white Southerner and his former slave to assist in freeing slaves.

Dr. George Coletti grew up in the shadow of Stone Mountain and is recognized as one of the city historians, a graduate of Georgia Military College, the University of Georgia, University of Louisville School of Dentistry and served in the 82nd Airborne Division. He is author of Stone Mountain: The Granite Sentinel, a 744-page historical novel about Stone Mountain during the War between the States. He was the Senior Author of Foot Prints in Granite. He was a contributor to; Images of Stone Mountain, Atlanta's Stone Mountain; A Multicultrual History, Crossroads of Conflict, (a guide for touring Civil War sites in Georgia), Toxic Handshake-A Case Study of the Ku Klux Klan and the movie, Grantham and Rose. He was a consultant for Out of Stone and Klandestine Man Documentaries.