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.

Aminata's eventual return to Sierra Leone?passing ships carrying thousands
of slaves bound for America?is an engrossing account of an obscure but
important chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on
a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey. Lawrence Hill is a master at transforming
the neglected corners of history into brilliant imaginings, as engaging and
revealing as only the best historical fiction can be. A sweeping story that
transports the reader from a tribal African village to a plantation in the
southern United States, from the teeming Halifax docks to the manor houses
of London, The Book of Negroes introduces one of the strongest female
characters in recent Canadian fiction, one who cuts a swath through a world
hostile to her colour and her sex.

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