The Rockland Public Library presents Carol Gardner, Thursday, July 31, at 6:30 p.m. This event is free and open to all.

Carol Gardner will offer a talk based on her latest history book, The Divided North: Black and White Families in the Age of Slavery, which contrasts two families in Portland, Maine in the turbulent 1800s.

"This dual-family biography demonstrates that the North was a critical proving ground for American ideals of freedom and equality, as telling as any town, plantation, or battlefield in the South," said a news release. "The experiences of these families help reveal what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery, with all the promise, disappointment, irony, and hope that the notion entailed."

Carol Gardner is author of The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner’s Journey to the New World. She has written pieces for The Washington Post, Portland Press Herald, Time-Life Books, and The Women’s Review of Books, among others. She collaborated on content development, writing, and editing for Blue Planet Quarterly, a magazine on ocean issues.

For more information or for Zoom links, please email elewis@rocklandmaine.gov.

The Rockland Public Library is located at 80 Union St.