Meticulously researched — the footnotes take up about a sixth of the book, and are worth looking at … Stolen is a remarkable narrative, in part, because of how Bell manages to clearly relate the complicated politics of the time without ever legitimizing the choices made by those who bought and sold human lives. It’s also wonderful for the ways in which Bell infuses each stage of the children’s harrowing ordeal with empathy, focusing in on what they might have been feeling, drawing either from the precious little that remains of their own voices or from contemporary accounts of similarly traumatic kidnappings. In telling as full a story as he can, Bell gives voice to the broader implications of this episode while not losing sight of all that is specific and singular about Tilghman, Manlove, Johnson, Sinclair, and Scomp’s experiences.
