In 1856, runaway slave Margaret Garner killed her 3-year-old daughter in Ohio rather than see her returned to bondage in Northern Kentucky.

        The story is tragic enough without embellishment. Now we're asked to believe Ms. Garner has spoken from beyond the grave — to a 40-something white woman in Yellow Springs.

        I'm not kidding.

        After five years of research, Joanne Caputo has posted on the Internet a 200-page book called Diversity of Love: The Margaret Garner Story. In it, she mixes traditional research with commentary from dead people, including Ms. Garner and her owner, Archibald Gaines.

Joanne Caputo clutches her “Margaret doll” after building a shrine to former slave Margaret Garner in this 1998 photo. (Enquirer file photo) | ZOOM |

        “Some of these souls have never been heard and they deserve our compassion as they describe their suffering,” Ms. Caputo writes in the introduction.

        I'm annoyed.

        Margaret Garner was just beginning to assume her rightful place in U.S. history. Now her saga has been hijacked by a kook.

        In 1987, Toni Morrison published Beloved, her Pulitzer prize-winning novel based on the Garner tragedy. Then Oprah Winfrey made it into a movie. These projects sparked interest in the true story, which had fallen out of American history texts.

        In 1998, Kentucky archaeologists began surveying the Boone County farm where Ms. Garner worked.

        Ms. Caputo was present during that survey and gave quotes to reporters. She became known as a Garner scholar, even lecturing at an Ohio conference on the Underground Railroad.

        She calls her book “historical spiritual nonfiction.” The spirits' words are printed in italics, so skeptical readers can skip those parts, she says.

        But Ms. Caputo doesn't suggest the italicized parts are untrue. And with the Internet's popularity as a research tool, her bizarre imaginings may well end up in term papers across the country.

        These are some of the unsubstantiated bombshells dropped by dead people in the book:

This mid-19th-century structure is the cookhouse in which Margaret Garner, a slave who killed her 3-year-old daughter rather than see her return to a life of bondage, is believed to have worked. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

        • Archibald Gaines killed his first wife.

        • Mr. Gaines farmed out Ms. Garner as a prostitute.

        • John P. Gaines, Archibald's brother, pulled down his pants and “mooned” Ms. Caputo's spiritual medium during one of their sessions.

        This might be funny if it weren't so earnest — and so objectionable to Gaines' descendants.

        “It is most interesting that we can now write a book about anybody and say anything,” says John Gaines of Alabama, a descendant of John P. Gaines. “As long as we have spirits guiding our pen, no one can dispute us.”

        In the book, the spirits' comments are woven through a factual retelling of the tragedy, which was a cause celebre of the time. A slavewoman had escaped to Cincinnati, then killed her own child as lawmen closed in to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. For some, this proved the inhumanity of slavery; for others, the inhumanity of slaves.

        “The sad thing is she's done a whole lot of research for this thing,” says Dr. Stephen Weisenberger of the University of Kentucky, whose book Modern Medea, about the Garner case, was published by Hill and Wang in 1998.

        There is still much to be written about Margaret Garner and her times. Cincinnati's own moral history — as a place where slaves were both hunted down and spirited to safety — is intertwined with hers.

        The record will always have gaps. We have two choices: either look harder or resolve to live with what we don't know.

        Fantasy shouldn't be an option. It insults the memory of all those who suffered for the truth.
       Karen Samples can be reached at (859) 578-5584 or at ksamples@enquirer.com.
       

City fights for drug exclusion zone
Asbestos puts scare in workers
Eight 'graduates' joining city police
Priest from Uganda mourned
Tamer Mardi Gras in works
Antarctic visits recounted
Girl, 16, charged with vehicular homicide
'Souper Bowl' feeds hungry
Tristate A.M. Report
Villages unite to improve
Vine St. overseer begins city job
Whitewater land bought for parks
THOMPSON: Faith Matters
MCNUTT: Warren County
SAMPLES: Historical, spiritual nonfiction?
WELLS: The Cheney syndrome
Butler Co. sister has only hope
3-year-old DNA sample leads to arrest in rape
Family says goodbye to matriarch
Trials in Lebanon likely done
McConnell raises $3.5 million
Enron has Bunning backpedaling
Federal funds sought for sidewalks
Kentucky News Briefs
Ky. man charged in pair of rapes
Local 'stars' get air time in GED show
Lucas' challenger gets funds