Lesa Cline-Ransome’s moving novel in verse One Big Open Sky is riven by questions of freedom. Early on in the tale of 10 black families heading West out of Mississippi to take advantage of the land promised by the Homestead Act of 1862, 11-year-old Lettie, the novel’s most prominent voice, relates, ‘ Us colored folks/ ain’t never gonna be free/ the way white folks is/ We gotta find/ our own
