According to www.madwomanintheforest.com, it was Benjamin Franklin who started Laurie Halse Hernandez on her journey to write the book Chains. The text states that she did not know that he owned slaves, or that a lot of our first presidents did too. She also discovered that 1 in 5 people were slaves and “sold like cattle”. She states that as she began to discover more, her main character, Isabel, came more and more into focus.
The text states that Isabel was chained between two nations, the British and the Americans. Laurie states that she is the “heart of America” and hopes that she can be free. But, she is faced with an obstacle at every corner and has to deal with the “hatred and ignorance”