Belfield
A Novel
This is a novel based on an incident in the life of Charles Willson Peale, Early American painter, Revolutionary War veteran, inventor, museum founder, farmer. Although he opposed slavery publicly, Peale accepted an enslaved family into his household as payment for a debt. He freed the husband and wife after a few years, but held their son, Moses Williams, until he was 26, and taught him to be a profile cutter, working in his Philadelphia natural history museum. In imagining the Peale family’ s life on an 18th-century farm, the book explores ethics and inclusion: the contradictions at the heart of this country.
Joan Aleshire was born in Baltimore, Maryland with limb differences. She grew up in a large extended family, hearing stories about their Peale ancestors. She began to read and write stories, plays, and poems. Joan graduated from independent schools, and from Harvard/Radcliffe in 1960. She studied film and Russian, married, worked on a therapeutic farm in Vermont, and had a daughter. She received an MFA from Goddard College in 1980, became Interim Director of the Warren Wilson MFA Program, and was on the poetry faculty from 1983 to 2013.
