Four years after his first book, Bend writer Thomas Norman DeWolf has co-authored a second: “Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade,” with Sharon Leslie Morgan, a marketing consultant and genealogist from New York.

The two will read from their book at both Paulina Springs Books locations later this week (see “If you go”).

Locals may better recall him from his political days as Tom DeWolf. He served on the Bend City Council from 1993 to 1996 and the Deschutes County Commission from 1998 to 2005.

DeWolf resigned from the commission after he was accused of touching two women without their consent. The authorities did not pursue criminal charges against him, but DeWolf would later call the period, “the most difficult, shaming, embarrassing, challenging time of my life.”

However, it also gave him time to reflect on the past — his own and his family’s.

DeWolf resurfaced in 2008 with “Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History.”

In it, he traveled with family members to Cuba, Ghana and Rhode Island, historical points in the “Triangle Trade,” where their ancestors practiced the slave trade.

Since writing and promoting his first book, DeWolf, 58, has spent his time writing at home in Bend or speaking at colleges, conferences or leading workshops and teacher trainings, he said.

Co-author Morgan told The Bulletin she was familiar with DeWolf’s first book when she met him at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia in 2008. The two were there as participants in “Coming to the Table,” a project that brings together the descendants of slaves and slaveholders, aimed at healing and building relationships.

“It created a model of working together in real deep, accountable, authentic ways,” DeWolf says. The two had little to do with one another at first, he added, but “a year later, we started talking about what if two people were to live this model of healing” they’d been learning about.

Morgan grew up in Chicago’s South Side, confessing in the book that she finds white people scary. Nevertheless, she and DeWolf would embark on a book project together. Over three years, they visited Tobago and traveled through 27 states, visiting old plantations, cemeteries, Civil War reenactments, civil rights museums, various historic sites, as well as visiting each other’s families.

In their book, they discuss in frank terms the wounds left by slavery and racism in America.

“Racism is enshrined as part of the American way,” Morgan says. “The takeaway (from the book) is confronting that past productively into the future.”

“I don’t expect anybody to do what we did over the past three years. That’s part of the reason for the book: Here’s what Sharon and Tom did,” DeWolf says.

He hopes it inspires its readers to take a personal journey of reflection and ask themselves, “What don’t I know about myself and the other?” he says. “The ‘other’ can be a variety of things. We’re focused specifically on slavery and racism, the big unhealed wound in our country, but it applies to religious intolerance, discrimination based on age or class, what have you.”

Morgan hints that she and DeWolf could team up on a future writing project. He says this first collaboration “went remarkably smooth for two pretty strong-willed people.”

Either way, it looks like DeWolf will stick with writing. In a follow-up email to The Bulletin, he added, “I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a freshman in college. It took me longer than most folks to finally do what I truly love in life. It’s gratifying to finally be here.”

If you go

What: Sharon Leslie Morgan and Thomas Norman DeWolf discuss “Gather at the Table”

Details:

• 6:30 p.m. Friday at Paulina Springs Books Redmond, 422 S.W. Sixth St.

* 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Paulina Springs Books Sisters, 252 W. Hood Ave.

Cost: Free

Contact: www.paulinasprings.com