Lawrence Hill · 2007 · exile

Abducted at eleven from her West African village, Aminata Diallo endures the Middle Passage to slavery in South Carolina, wins her freedom in Revolutionary New York, and journeys on through Nova Scotia and back to Africa before carrying her story to London and the abolitionist cause.

1. 1
   Bayo

   A jeweller's daughter, Aminata is seized when slavers burn her village and marched three months to the sea in a coffle of chained captives.

2. 2
   Bance Island

   At the slave fort in the Sierra Leone estuary she is branded and loaded aboard a ship bound across the Atlantic.

3. 3
   Charleston

   Surviving the Middle Passage, she is sold to an indigo plantation in South Carolina and later to a Charles Town inspector.

4. 4
   New York

   During the Revolution she reaches British-held Manhattan, earns her freedom, and enters names into the ledger called the Book of Negroes.

5. 5
   Shelburne

   Evacuated with the Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia, she helps build the settlement of Birchtown amid cold, poverty and riots.

6. 6
   Freetown

   She joins the great return to Africa, founding Freetown in Sierra Leone within sight of the very slave fort where her ordeal began.

7. 7
   London

   At last she sails to England, gives her testimony to the abolitionists, and is reunited with her long-lost daughter.