After writing a 1988 article about her experience at St. Paul's,
Phillip Lopate, reviewing the book for
The New York Times called it a "stunning memoir". The book, "bruisingly honest about class, race and sex in America", Her first book, it was published in paperback the next year by
Vintage Books. In 1995, Cary published her first novel,
The Price of a Child. It is based on the escape of
Jane Johnson, a slave from North Carolina who escaped to freedom with her two sons while briefly in Philadelphia with her master and his family. Set in 1855, the novel tells the story of Ginnie Pryor, a
slave from a Virginia plantation who is bought by the US Ambassador to Nicaragua. En route with her new owner to New York City, for their voyage to South America, she escapes via the
Underground Railroad and works to build a new life in
Philadelphia.
Fernanda Eberstadt, reviewing the novel in
The New York Times, commented that Cary "is a powerful storyteller, frankly sensual, mortally funny, gifted with an ear for the pounce and ragged inconsequentiality of real speech and an eye for the shifts and subterfuges by which ordinary people get by". In 1998, Cary published a second novel,
Pride, which explores the experiences of four contemporary black middle-class women. Cary's first Young Adult book,
FREE!, was a collection of non-fiction accounts related to the Underground Railroad, and published by Third World Press/New City Press in 2005. Cary said she believes these 12 stories of daring escapes "allow our 21st-century minds to imagine actively the inner lives of enslaved people – and put ourselves in their places, not with shame, but compassion and respect." Cary wrote the script for the videos of ''The President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,'' a 2010 exhibition in
The President's House in Philadelphia. In 2011, Cary published her third novel
If Sons, Then Heirs. It is a contemporary story of family, race, and the challenges of reconciling the present with a persistent past. Alonzo Rayne was raised in
South Carolina by his great-grandmother, Selma. Now he owns a construction business in Philadelphia and lives with Lillie, a single mom, and her seven-year-old son, Khalil. As the story begins, Alonzo goes to South Carolina to urge the aging Selma to sell her land, in order to pay for her long-term care. But she hasn't owned the land since King, her husband, died almost 50 years before. Selma was King's second wife, not an heir. Racist inheritance laws also left her dispossessed. Alonzo's mother contacts him, wanting to reconnect years after having abandoned him. Her marriage to a white man has turned her life around. Finally, Alonzo's investigation into his great-grandmother's land puts him on a collision course with the men who killed his great-grandfather. Says Carleen Brice, author of
Orange Mint and Honey and
Children of the Waters, "Every single character pops off the page in this amazing story. This masterwork of a novel made me laugh and cry out loud. Important, enjoyable, and wonderfully moving. An absolute delight." ==Art Sanctuary==