The Last Runaway cover art

The Last Runaway

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Last Runaway

By: Tracy Chevalier
Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Laurel Lefkow reads the stunning new novel from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring

When modest Quaker Honor Bright sails from Bristol with her sister, she is fleeing heartache for a new life in America, far from home. But tragedy leaves her alone and vulnerable, torn between two worlds and dependent on the kindness of strangers. Life in 1850s Ohio is precarious and unsentimental. The sun is too hot, the thunderstorms too violent, the snow too deep. The roads are spattered with mud and spit. The woods are home to skunks and porcupines and raccoons. They also shelter slaves escaping north to freedom.

Should Honor hide runaways from the ruthless men who hunt them down? The Quaker community she has joined may oppose slavery in principle, but does it have the courage to help her defy the law? Set in the tangled forests and sunlit cornfields of Ohio, Tracy Chevalier's vivid novel is the story of bad men and spirited women, surprising marriages and unlikely friendships, and the remarkable power of defiance.

©2013 Tracy Chevalier (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fiction Historical Fiction Heartfelt Law Ohio

Listeners also enjoyed...

 An Untamed Land cover art
Beneath Montana's Sky cover art
Into the Wilderness cover art
A Promise for Ellie cover art
The Search cover art
Fruit of the Lemon cover art
Mercer Girls cover art
The River Girl's Song cover art
Anna's Crossing cover art
Chevalier cover art
The Last Days of Dogtown cover art
Salt Creek cover art
America's First Daughter cover art
Beloved cover art
The Midwife's Revolt cover art
The Gilded Hour cover art
All stars
Most relevant
loved it, wanted to just keep listening. Highly recommend. Will look for other books by the same author for sure

loved it!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Last Runaway to be better than the print version?

Don't know as can't see well enough to read whole books any more.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I really liked Virginee (sic) who brought a degree of reality to her situation and that of her children.

Have you listened to any of Laurel Lefkow’s other performances? How does this one compare?

Not to my knowledge.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I don't have time to even consider a single sitting listen but I would have got through it quicker on holiday,

Any additional comments?

As this was someone else's choice, I was very agreeably surprised to findI liked it. I would actually rate it as one of the best books I have listened to this year. The narrator brilliantly dealt with the varying accents in the book and it was difficult to switch off at times so compelling was the story. Excellent all round.

Book group choice

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is an amazing tale – a naive young woman from Dorset, a Quaker, who accompanies her sister emigrating to Ohio. She soon discovers that even the northern states are riven with moral conflicts around slavery. She tries hard to hold fast to her beliefs, but comes under massive pressure to compromise. A beautifully told tale, superbly read.

Moral conflicts in pre-abolition America

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I love Tracy Chevalier books and really enjoyed this one. The story builds and the characters really come to life. The narrator is American which is fine as it is set in Ohio and in short bursts her Voicing of the Dorset accent of the main character is fine however in the longer passages which required a Dorset accent we drifted off to Yorkshire or even Lancashire!! 😉 Anyway - I recommend this book.

Story and characters build through the book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Tracy Chevalier learned to quilt whilst writing this story of a Quaker girl in the 19th century caught up in the underground railroad which helped slaves escape from the horrors of the Southern States. The result is a patchwork of characters that come together to give a picture of that time with as satisfying a denouement as anything Chevalier has given before.

Stitching together a history

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews