The freedom maze - Delia Sherman

1960 in America and thirteen-year-old Sophie is frustrated. Her mother has sent her to spend summer with Grandmama on their family's old estate in the sweltering bayous of southern Louisiana. Once a grand plantation, a hive of activity, it is now ramshackle, run down and all-but abandoned.

Bored, lonely and far too hot, Sophie starts exploring. When she discovers an overgrown maze, she makes her way inside, and lost among its pathways she finds a magical creature who promises her the adventure of a lifetime . . .

Sophie is transported a hundred years into the past to the Oak River plantation in its heyday.
Her own ancestors mistake her for a slave girl and set her to work alongside the hundreds of other slaves who tend to the fields, the house, and the white family's every whim. As the reality of slave life becomes horribly clear, Sophie starts to wonder how long she'll survive; and how - or if - she will ever get back home.

Both exciting and truly heart-breaking, The Freedom Maze is a very special novel about slavery, survival and the many paths to freedom.