Back in the 90s NPR's Talk of the Nation did a Bookclub of the Air once a month for a year or so. One month the selected book was Uncle Tom's Cabin. I'd never read it and thought the deadline would be a good incentive to do so, even though I expected it to be a slog.
It wasn't. Oh, the first fifty pages or so were a bit slow by modern standards, then things picked up and I simply could not put it down. A lot of the power of the book is that it was written a decade before the Civil War, and even passionate abolitionists could not foresee a time when slavery was gone from this country. Unlike every pre-Civil War novel written after 1865, because those always contain the underlying knowledge that slavery will end.
There's another scene that is incredibly powerful. It's after Eliza escapes to Ohio and has sought refuge with a family willing to harbor and aid escaping slaves, despite the laws against that. (There's even a lengthy discussion about this a bit earlier.) Clothes are needed for a baby or toddler (I've forgotten the specifics), and the woman of the house goes to get them. She has buried a young child just weeks before. Stowe then writes this: And oh mother that reads this, has there never been in your house a drawer or a closet, the opening of which has been to you like the opening again of a little grave? Oh happy mother that you are if it has not been so.
Losing a child was common, but no less grief encumbered than it is today when we expect all of our children to live to grow up.
By the way, I had not actually memorized that excerpt, but discovered the book is available to read on line on Good Reads. I knew about where to find that scene, and was able to skim until I could do so.
I hope you are able to read it soon. 
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