The Abolitionist (crossover: originalfic / The Slave Breakers)

[duskpeterson]

Title: The Abolitionist (Master and Servant #1).
Author: Dusk Peterson.
Where to find me: Website, e-mail list, DW, AO3, Patreon, Goodreads.
Fandoms: Original slash with gen and het subplots; with a major character borrowed (with permission) from Maculategiraffe's The Slave Breakers series.
Setting: Solomons Island and the area known in our world as Calvert Cliffs State Park, both next to the Chesapeake Bay in the 1910s, with a touch of retrofuture 1960s over the border.
Categories: Alternate universe / alternate history, Age of Sail, fishermen, liege-master & liegeman, master & servant, master/servant, master & slave, master/slave, mistress & servant, friendship, family, abolition, war, politics, spirituality, ethical issues.
Series: Waterman, an award-winning speculative fiction series in an alternative version of the Chesapeake Bay region during the 1910s and during the future as it was envisioned in the 1960s.
Length: Novel.
Status: Writing completed; currently serializing.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Rating: M.
Warnings: Boilerplate warning for all my stories + my rating system.
Story summary:

When a foul-mouthed, seditious foreigner turns up at your door, what are the benefits of letting him in?

So wonders Carr, a young man living in a bayside nation that is troubled by internal battles. In his world, servants fight against masters, tonging watermen fight against dredging watermen, and landsteads eye one another's oyster grounds with greed. It seems to Carr that the only way in which to keep such warfare from entering his own home is to keep very, very quiet about certain aspects of himself which his family would not be able to accept.

But "trouble" is a word that appears to delight the new visitor. He is ready to stir up danger . . . though he may not be as prepared as he thinks to confront what lies within Carr.

The servants were scared stiff of him, and the masters were clearly uncertain what to say to a man who came from such an eccentric House. Nothing was different, nothing had changed. And yet everything had changed since Carr met a young foreigner who showed him not the least bit of respect.