The Book of Negroes -- Synopsis

The Book of Negroes is the first novel to examine the story of African peoples who, after enslavement in the United States and escape to Canada, returned to Africa in the eighteenth century. Aminata Diallo begins the story of her tumultuous life with the words: “I seem to have trouble dying. By all rights, I should not have lived this long.” Aminata’s story spans six decades and three continents. Against the backdrop of British slavery and liberation in the U.S., Canada, England and West Africa, the Book of Negroes dramatizes one woman’s epic tale of survival and migration.

Born around 1745 in Mali, Aminata is kidnapped as a child and sent across the Atlantic OceantoSouth Carolina.She works on an indigo plantation and later as an urban slave before escaping her master in New York City on the eve of the American Revolutionary War. Aminata ends up serving the British as a midwife and then as a scribe, recording in a British military ledger called the “Book of Negroes”, the names and descriptions of thousands of fugitive slaves who are desperate to sail from New York City before George Washington and his American patriots take control of the city. At the end of the war, Aminata sails with thousands of blacks to Nova Scotia. In Shelburne, she discovers that freedom in the British colonies is illusory and in some respects just as dangerous as the slavery she fled in the American South. In 1792, Aminata joins the first "back to Africa” movement in the history of the Americas and sails with 1,200 Black Loyalists to Sierra Leone. After a decade in Africa, Aminata sails to England to advocate for the end of the slave trade and to write the life story that becomes this novel.

Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, Dear Reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied … What benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel?-- From The Book of Negroes

Note: The Book of Negroes will be published by HarperCollins Canadaon Jan. 30, 2007, and by W.W. Norton & Co. in the U.S.A. in 2008.

Lawrence Hill

(905) 336-1291

Lawrence Hill’s novels, non-fiction and essays have been published to critical acclaim and have captured the interest and allegiance of readers across Canada.

The Book of Negroes– Lawrence Hill’s third novel and sixth book – will be published by HarperCollins Canada on January 30, 2007. The Book of Negroes takes its title from a British military document recording details about thousands of Black Loyalists who fled New York City for Nova Scotia in 1783. It is the first novel to examine the story of African peoples who, after enslavement in the United States and escape to Canada, returned to Africa in the late eighteenth century.

Also in 2007, Lawrence Hill will be releasing a non-fiction book with House of Anansi Press in Canada, Atlantic Monthly Press in the U.S and Text Publishing Company in Australia. Co-authored with Joshua Key, it is called The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq.

Hill’s last book was the bestseller Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. He is also the author of two acclaimed novels– the bestseller Any Known BloodandSome Great Thing.

Lawrence Hill has won two awards recently. In 2006, he won the National Magazine Award for the best essay published in Canada in 2005 for “Is Africa’s Pain Black America’s Burden?” (The Walrus, February 2005). In 2005, the 90-minute film document that Hill wrote, Seeking Salvation: A History of the Black Church in Canada, Travesty Productions, Toronto (2004), won the American Wilbur Award for best national television documentary.

Formerly a staff reporter with The Globe and Mail and the Parliamentary correspondent for The Winnipeg Free Press, Hill is the son of Donna Hill and the late Dr. Daniel Hill, American immigrants who spent their lives at the forefront of the Canadian human rights movement and co-founded the Ontario Black History Society.

Hill speaks French and Spanish, and has lived and worked across Canada, in Baltimore, and in Spain and France. He has worked as a volunteer with Canadian Crossroads International in Mali, Niger and Cameroon, the Ontario Black History Society in Toronto and The Writers’ Union of Canada.

Hill speaks frequently at conferences, universities, community events and in schools. Recently, he has given readings and lectures in The Netherlands, Uruguay and at PrincetonUniversity, as well as at venues across Canada.