Author Talk and Book Signing with Robin Michel Caudell

June 21, 2026

Visit Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center for an author talk and book signing with Robin Michel Caudell, author of “Black Heel Strings: A Choptank Memoir.”, 2023 Veterans Writing Award winner.

In this lyrical memoir, Robin Michel Caudell meditates on memory and identity as she traces her childhood in a Black family navigating poverty and racism on the Delmarva Peninsula. Many know Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman’s exodus stories out of bondage in rural Maryland, but what about the people who stayed? It is from this place and history that Caudell’s story begins. Growing up in the segregated 1960s, Caudell is the living legacy of the ones who did not run away and of the Free People of Color/Christianized Indians who partnered with their enslaved brethren in a precarious dance of love in Chesapeake Country.