Thursday, December 17, 2026 · 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Sawyer Free Library — 2 Dale Ave., Gloucester, MA
Please join us for an author talk with Wayne Soini, who will be discussing his latest book, The Girl in the Shed!
"the first slave freed by Abraham Lincoln". This unbreakable woman was much more. Building on his co-author, Carl Adams, thirty years of research local writer Wayne Soini shares highlights of his most recent book, The Girl in the Salt Shed. He will explain how Nance became a civil rights pioneer in her own right while Lincoln was still a farmboy.
Wayne Soini is a retired lawyer and lifelong Lincoln fan who helped Professor Charles B. Strozier to research his groundbreaking Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln: The Enduring Friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed (Columbia University Press, 2016), which was a Finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Soini is the author in his own right of several biographies including Porter’s Secret (Peter Randall Press, 2011), Norman Corwin: His Early Years and Radio Career 1910–1950 (McFarland, 2021), and Abraham Lincoln, American Prince: Ancestry, Ambition, and Anti-Slavery (McFarland, 2022).