Quote:Plot introduction

Aminata Diallo, an 11-year-old child, is taken from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle — a string of slaves. Eventually, she arrives in South Carolina where she begins a new life as a slave. Due to circumstantial events in her life, Aminata develops certain advantages other slaves do not: she possesses the skills of a midwife and learns how to read and write.
Years later, she finds freedom, serving the British in the American Revolutionary War and having her name entered in the historic "Book of Negroes." This book, an actual historical document, is an archive of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States in order to resettle in Nova Scotia, only to discover that this new place becomes one that is also oppressive and unyielding. Aminata eventually returns to Sierra Leone, passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America, and ultimately finds herself crossing the ocean one more time to England to present the account of her life so that it may abolish the slave trade, that crudely is a sad part of our history.