LaRoche’s book provides a much-needed investigation of Quinn’s life, his importance to the AMEC, and his efforts to assist enslaved African Americans to freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Rev. Dr. C. Dennis Williams, presiding elder of the Tyler District, associate professor of religious studies, Paul Quinn College

In this richly researched account, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche has recovered the dramatic, often colorful, story of one of the greatest figures in the development of the Black church in America, William Paul Quinn. She has brought into focus a man of moral passion, indefatigable energy, and bold personal courage who not only organized scores of congregations from Canada to Kansas, but also played a central role in the development of the Underground Railroad. This book will prove essential to our understanding of the deep connections between the AME church and radical abolitionism in antebellum America.

Fergus Bordewich, author of Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America

This compelling account of William Paul Quinn's chronicles his intersecting activities as an AME minister and as an Underground Railroad operative. His journeys within the Atlantic World highlight his diasporic advocacy of black freedom.

Dennis C. Dickerson, Ph.D., James M. Lawson, Jr. Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

A thoroughly researched and moving biography of Paul Quinn, a driving force in the founding and development of the AME Church. As LaRoche so amply shows, Quinn and the church he did so much to build were in the vanguard of the fight against slavery and racial discrimination.

Richard J. Blackett, Andrew Jackson Professor of History, Vanderbilt University; author of Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery