A Hudson Valley Reckoning tells the long-ignored story of slavery's history in upstate New York through Debra Bruno's absorbing chronicle that uncovers her Dutch ancestors' slave-holding past and leads to a deep connection with the descendants of the enslaved people her family owned.

Bruno, who grew up in New York's Hudson Valley knowing little about her Dutch heritage, was shaken when a historian told her that her Dutch ancestors were almost certainly slaveholders. Driven by this knowledge, Bruno began to unearth her family's past. In the last will and testament of her ancestor, she found the first evidence: human beings bequeathed to his family along with animals and furniture. The more she expanded her family tree, the more enslavers she found. She reached out to Black Americans tracing their own ancestry, and by serendipitous luck became friends with Eleanor C. Mire, a descendent of a woman enslaved by Bruno's Dutch ancestors.

With the help of Mire, who provides a moving epilogue, Debra Bruno tells the story of white and Black lives impacted by the stain of slavery and its long legacy of racism, as she investigates the erasure of the uncomfortable truths about our family and national histories.

The book is published by Three Hills, an imprint of Cornell University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"Debra Bruno has given us a heartfelt exploration of her own past, and ours." (Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World)

"An enthralling story and an important work of history, impressively researched and beautifully told." (Jonathan Eig, author of King)

"Fascinating and moving work...A necessary work of historical repair." (Leslie M. Harris, author of In the Shadow of Slavery)