"With his characteristic insight, sensitivity, and irresistibly vibrant language, Daniel Lord Smail reveals the world of Magdalena Coline, an enslaved woman who fought for her rights in a French court. By following Magdalena's surprising trajectory and tracing the circle of people around her, Smail brilliantly captures the experiences, social codes, and ambiguities of Mediterranean slavery, offering an intimate history full of drama, intrigue, and high stakes." --Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake "Smail achieves something extraordinary in this book, giving us both a lapidary microhistory of the experiences of one woman and a broad, sweeping account of the dynamics of slavery, law, and economics in the later medieval Mediterranean. In a story that unfolds as grippingly as any modern courtroom drama, Magdalena acts as a lens through which we can view the wider northern Italian society around her while never losing sight of the shimmering light of humanity at its core." --John H. Arnold, author of What Is Medieval History? "A meaningful intervention in medieval social history and the history of slavery. By richly contextualizing a series of lawsuits brought by a formerly enslaved woman, Smail brings new analytical insight to their significance in the lives of the people involved and the legal and social frameworks within which they acted." --Hannah Barker, author of That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500 "This is a dramatic and compelling account of the life of Magdalena Coline and her efforts to obtain legal victory against her former enslaver.

It is a history that helps us to understand the essentially unknown nature of enslavement in early fifteenth-century Marseille while also bringing that city to life in incredibly vivid detail. A must-read." --Sara McDougall, author of Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230 "Smail's insightful and capacious book traces Magdalena Coline's remarkable trajectory from slavery to freedom, from Islam to Christianity, and from two marriages to economic well-being and the ability to shape her own life. Her gripping tale is a triumph of scholarship, a major original contribution by one of the leading and most versatile medievalists in the world today." --Teofilo F. Ruiz, author of The Terror of History: On the Uncertainties of Life in Western Civilization.