Sunday Salon ~ books and great-grands

What I'm reading now

The Book of Negroes ~ by Lawrence Hill, 2007, fiction (South Carolina and Canada)

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.  This sweeping story 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.

What I have lined up

The Ugly Little Boy ~ by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, 1992, science fiction

This science fiction classic, first published in 1958, is a chilling tale of what happens when past and present collide.  When Stasis Technologies, Ltd., plucks a Neanderthal child off the prehistoric tundra and transports it into the twenty-first century, the scientific conglomerate gives no thought to the creature's human feelings.  The nurse assigned to the case must somehow bridge the 40,000-year gap to forge an emotional bond that transcends time.  And, when Miss Fellowes learns of the intended disposition of the "Timmie experiment," it is up to her to travel back through time with the "ape-boy" as he rejoins his tribe on the cutting edge of civilization.

What I just finished

Some Luck ~ by Jane Smiley, 2014, fiction (Iowa), 8/10

My five great-grandkids

Bloggers gather in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time zones — to talk about our lives and our reading.