Chains Themes

Today, family is usually a major source of support, both emotionally and practically speaking. For slave families in Isabel's time, however, white people often have little regard for the bonds betw...

A feisty slave with Patriot leanings and a mild-mannered elderly Loyalist aren't the most likely candidates for Isabel's best friends in her new life in New York—but they're exactly who she gets...

Thirteen-year-old girls have enough to worry about when it comes to identity issues, but when you're a slave in 18th-century New York fighting for your very existence, well, we'd say things get a b...

The core of Chains might be Isabel's battle against the evils of slavery (and Madam Lockton), but we can't get the whole picture of her story without looking at the larger battle taking place in th...

Let's face it: Isabel's position as a slave presents a lot of tough questions about a pretty bleak chapter of American history. Chains reminds us that there was once a time when it was considered t...

There's nothing like facing danger, impossible odds, and life-threatening opposition to bring out the bravery you didn't know you had. Isabel may be small, young, and powerless in the eyes of her o...

Wafflers. Posers. Flip-floppers. They go by many names, but at their core, they're all good old-fashioned hypocrites, people who claim to hold certain beliefs or ideals, but don't practice what the...

Memory means two critical things to Isabel in Chains. It's a natural skill she's carefully honed since childhood, one that she cannot make her way to freedom without, and it's also a source of comf...

If there was one thing the American colonies had issues with, it was following orders. Think about it: Parliament places taxes on paper products and a violent mob in Boston loots the Lieutenant Gov...

If there's one thing Chains has plenty of, it's pain. Our heroine, Isabel, experiences more suffering in her thirteen years than anyone should in a lifetime—she's enslaved, branded, beaten, separ...