The book of negroes : [a novel] / Lawrence Hill.

Hill, Lawrence, 1957- (Author).

Summary:

Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle - a string of slaves - Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic "Book of Negroes". This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own.

When Aminata Diallo sits down to pen the story of her life in London, England, she has a world of experience behind her. Abducted from her village in West Africa as an eleven-year-old child and forced to walk in a coffle - a string of slaves - for months to the sea, Aminata is put to work on an indigo plantation on the sea islands of South Carolina. She survives by using midwifery skills learned at her mother's side and by drawing on a strength inhereted from both her parents. But Aminata remains trapped, narrowly avoiding the violence that cuts short so many lives around her. Eventually she has the chance to register her name in the "Book of Negroes" a historic British military ledger allowing 3,000 Black Loyalists passage on ships sailing from Manhattan to Nova Scotia.